Charles Mather

 

 Department of Geography
 Memorial University of Newfoundland
 St. John's, NL
 A1B 3X9

 Office: SN 2017
 Tel: (709) 864-8193
 Fax: (709) 864-3119
 cmather[at]mun[dot]ca

 Research

 

Globalization, Economy & Resources

Sustainable Communities & Regions

Health & Well-being



My current research focus is linked to an Ocean Frontier Institute Large Research Grant on social license and aquaculture. I am most involved in the 'social license' and 'community dynamics’ components of this large project. Together with colleagues at Memorial, we are working on a range of topics related to aquaculture and social acceptability broadly defined including marine debris, salmon naturecultures, feed bio-economies, aquaculture as frontier industry, and eco-certification. Theoretically we work at the intersection between STS and political economy.

https://coastalfutures.ca/


Education

My first degree was from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where I majored in Geography and Industrial Sociology. I subsequently received an MA from the University of British Columbia, and a PhD from Queen’s in Kingston.

Selected Publications

Mather, C., Singh, G. 2024, When maximizing food production manufactures disaster risk. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 
https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/when-maximizing-food-production-manufactures-disaster-risk/#post-heading

Mather, C. 2024, Phasing out open net-pen salmon farming in British Columbia. Science Advances, 10(42), eadt4568. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adt4568

Adjemian, M., Janes, H., Martin, S.J., Mather, C. and White, M.J. 2024, Protein politics: Sustainable protein and the logic of energy. CFS/RCÉA, 11(1), 47–65. https://canadianfoodstudies.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cfs/article/view/628/572

Singh, G.G., Sajid, Z. and Mather, C. 2024, Quantitative analysis of mass mortality events in salmon aquaculture shows increasing scale of fish loss events around the world. Sci Rep 14, 3763. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-54033-9

Knott, C., Wiber, M.G. and Mather, C. 2024, Aquaculture’s offshore frontier: learning from the Canadian courts on ocean grabbing, ocean privatization, and property as process. Maritime Studies 23, 5.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40152-023-00348-8

Martin, S.J. and Mather, C. 2023, ‘Finprint’ technopolitics and the corporatisation of global food governance. Area, 00, 1–8. 
https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/area.12907

Guthman, J., Butler, M., Martin, S.J., Mather, C. and Biltekoff, C., 2022. In the name of protein, Nature Food, rdcu.be/cOGXb.

Power, N., Melvin, J., Mather, C. 2021. Multispecies hierarchies and capitalist value: Insights from salmon aquaculture, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.

Schoot, I. and Mather, C. 2021. Opening up containment, Science, Technology and Human Values.

Wiber, M.G., Mather, C., Knott, C. and Gómez, M.A.L., 2021. Regulating the Blue Economy? Challenges to an effective Canadian aquaculture act. Marine Policy, 131, p.104700.

Knott, C. and Mather, C., 2021.Ocean frontier assemblages: Critical insights from Canada's industrial salmon sector, Journal of Agrarian Change. 

Martin, S.J., Mather, C., Knott, C. and Bavington, D., 2021. ‘Landing’salmon aquaculture: Ecologies, infrastructures and the promise of sustainability. Geoforum, 123, pp.47-55.

Foley, P., Mather, C., Dawe, N. and Snook, J. (2019) Creative and constrained hybridisations in subarctic Inuit communities: Communal fishery development in Nunatsiavut, Canada. In C. Patrick Heidkamp and John Morrissey (eds) Towards Coastal Resilience and Sustainability, Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 309-326. Click here for access.

Mather, C. and Fanning, L. 2019. Is social licence ?going rogue’?, , 185(4), 498-504.

Foley, P. and Mather, C., 2019. Ocean grabbing, terraqeuous territoriality and social development, Territory, Politics and Governance, 7(3), 297-315.

Mather, C. and Fanning, L., 2019. Social licence and aquaculture: towards a research agenda, Marine Policy, 99, 275-282.

Mather, C., Johnsen, J.P., Sonvisen, S., Sridhar, A. and Stephen, J. 2017. Introduction to the themed issue – poststructural approaches to fisheries, Maritime Studies, 16:20. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40152-017-0074-4.

Daniels, J. and Mather, C., 2017. Conservation and care: material politics and Atlantic salmon on Newfoundland’s Gander River, Maritime Studies, 16:17. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40152-017-0072-6

Daniels, J. and Mather, C., 2017. Conserving Atlantic salmon ‘after nature’ on Newfoundland’s Gander River, British Journal for the History of Science, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/bjt.2016.15.