Dr Rebecca Macklin

Biography

I hold a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Leeds, which I gained in 2020. From 2017-18 I was a Fulbright Researcher at Cornell University and from 2020-21 I was Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, at the University of Pennsylvania. I was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (2021-2024) coming to Aberdeen in 2023 from the University of Edinburgh. In October 2024, I took up the post of Interdisciplinary Research Fellow in Social Inclusion and Cultural Diversity at the University of Aberdeen.

My work sits at the intersection between Indigenous studies and the environmental humanities. I am interested in the radical potential of literature, media, and cultural texts and the roles they play in decolonial and environmental justice movements - particularly in relation to the United States, Canada, and South Africa. My forthcoming monograph Unsettling Fictions: Relationality and Resistance in Native American and South African Literatures explores the resonances between Indigenous and Black anti-colonial literary traditions in the US and South Africa. I have published related research in edited volumes and journals including Interventions, ARIEL, and Transatlantica.

My recent Leverhulme project, Entwined Futures: Indigeneity, Gender, and Resource Extraction (2021-24), explored how Indigenous creators are navigating the pressures of resource extraction and environmental degradation on their territories, with a particular emphasis on how artistic and cultural texts imagine alternative ethics and relations beyond colonial logics.

I also have begun to develop new interdisciplinary research to better understand how the arts and humanities can facilitate the co-creation of research with communities around questions of energy production, access, and transition. In 2022, I co-founded the Intersecting Energy Cultures Working Group with Professor Bethany Wiggin (University of Pennsylvania) to explore these questions.

Prizes and Awards

Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Cornell University, 2017-2018 (US-UK Fulbright Commission)

Research Overview

My research focuses on questions of environmental justice and the impacts of energy production and resource extraction, informed by my background in the environmental humanities and Indigenous literatures. I am interested in how various art forms, including literature, film, and performance art, can be employed as tools for challenging colonial, capitalist and extractivist logics and imagining modes of relation that are rooted in alternative ethics. While much of my research is focused on North American and South African contexts, my current research employs participatory research methods to better understand how communities in Scotland are experiencing environmental change and energy transitions and how such changes impact questions of culture, heritage, and belonging.

Current Research

Co-founder of the Intersecting Energy Cultures Working Group

Project lead: 'Listening to North Sea Communities in Transition', funded by COAST-R Network (2026), developed in partnership with Greyhope Bay, North Yell Development Council, and the Elphinstone Institute.

Co-Investigator: JUST-Systems (2025-2029). 

JUST-Systems is a UKRI-funded £5.6 million, five-year research programme designed to place people and communities at the heart of the Net Zero transition. Delivered through a partnership between the Universities of Aberdeen, Stirling, Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Reading, and Warwick, the programme works closely with five regional case studies - Aberdeen, Clackmannanshire, East Ayrshire, Reading, and Wales.

Funding and Grants

COAST-R Network Small Grants Fund 2026: 'Listening to North Sea Communities in Transition'.

British Academy and Wellcome Trust Conferences Scheme (2023): Resisting Toxic Climates: Gender, Colonialism and Environment

Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (2021-24): Entwined Futures: Indigeneity, Gender, and the Extractive Industries

UK-US Fulbright Commission, Visiting Researcher (2017-18): Cornell University, affiliated with the Department of English and the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program