Author: Tina Adcock

For Pride Month in 2026, Jessica DeWitt, Sarah York-Bertram and I co-edited the fourth biennial edition of the series “Succession: Queering the Environment” for NiCHE’s blog, The Otter~La loutre. This year’s theme was “Queer Joy.” We asked contributors to build off of scholarship and lived knowledge that envisions queer joy as a way of knowing and being in relation with the environment and more-than-human beings.

You can find the series’ twelve posts here, and my conclusion to the series here. In the latter, I reflect on five themes that cross-cut the series, and which future scholars of queer joy in environmental history and the environmental humanities might consider building on. I also share a sliver of my own research-in-progress into queer history!

I’m delighted to share that A Cold Colonialism has won the Canadian Historical Association’s 2026 Clio Prize (The North)! Here is the award citation, originally published on the CHA’s website:

Tina Adcock’s A Cold Colonialism is a highly innovative historical study which reassesses northern exploration during the first half of the 20th century as framing a modern North for audiences outside the region and aiding industrial resource developments but also entrenching colonialism. Focusing on four individuals, George Douglas, Guy Blanchet, Richard Finnie, and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, whom Adcock considers explorers in a very broad sense and studies as members of a “community of northern interest,” she uncovers new stories of knowledge collaboration and old stories of exploration steeped in a culture of colonialism. She examines these explorers through pairing them with each other, which is one of the most commendable analytical achievements of the book. By bringing these four men together in ever changing constellations, Adcock skillfully draws the reader into the many complicated intersections between science, government and corporate interests in the Canadian arctic and subarctic and the construction of the region as modern and industrial. At the same time, Adcock shows how knowledge claims about the region became increasingly contested while they were legitimized through first-hand embodied or relational experiences which excluded Indigenous or female expertise. Adcock engages commendably with a broad range of historical approaches and consulted a diversity of archival material. Her book provides a new lens on northern exploration, one that reminds us of the controlling construction of the region from the outside.

My latest H-Environment Roundtable Review centres on Gretchen Heefner’s Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments (University of Chicago Press, 2025). It features commentaries by Toshihiro Higuchi, Dario Fazzi, Paul Landsberg, and Ruth Lawlor, as well as my introduction and a response by Heefner.

You can check the roundtable out here!

Thanks to Cristina-Georgiana Voicu for her review of A Cold Colonialism in the British Journal of Canadian Studies. (It’s paywalled, but the full text is captured in the abstract.)

I’m honoured, and thrilled, that A Cold Colonialism has been shortlisted for the Canadian Historical Association’s 2026 Best (English-Language) Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize! Many congratulations to my fellow nominees.

You can view the full shortlist here.

H-Sci-Med-Tech has just published my review of Adrian Howkins and Peder Roberts’ edited volume, The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Among other pleasures associated with reading this book, it was great to have the excuse to catch up on the recent historiography of Antarctica!

Click here to read the review.

In episode 77, “Modern Exploration and the Canadian North,” I chat with Sean Kheraj – which is always such a delight – about A Cold Colonialism.

Many thanks to Sean for making time to speak with me, and for editing and releasing this episode so quickly amidst his very busy schedule!

Many thanks to Heather Green for her warm, generous review of A Cold Colonialism for H-Environment. You can read it here.

My latest H-Environment Roundtable Review centres on Sureshkumar Muthukumaran’s The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean (University of California Press, 2023). It features commentaries by Samuel Dolbee, Barbara Böck, and Vladimir Dabrowski as well as my introduction and a response by Muthukumaran. 

You can check the roundtable out here!

A Cold Colonialism has received its first review (hooray)! Tyler McCreary’s review (which is paywalled) appears in Canadian Geographies.