Teaching Assistant Professor (Ph.D. Exeter)

Research Interests

Resource Curse; Gender and Climate Justice; Indigenous Land Displacement; Colonialism in Policing; Colonialism in Media; Decolonizing Research Methods; Orientalism and Race; Nineteenth-Century Social Theory; Sociology of Religion.

Contact Information

Office: A-4067

Email: loates@mun.ca

Ph: 709-864-7445

Personal Profile

Dr. Oates holds degrees in Sociology, Political Science, and an M.Phil. (Humanities) from Memorial University of Newfoundland. She worked in senior roles in the provincial government before returning to university full time in 2011 to pursue a Ph.D. After being awarded an international doctoral studentship from the University of Exeter, she researched the transnational movement of occult philosophies, as driven by British and French imperialism. This research was conducted at the British Library, Oxford Special Collections, the Gladstone Library, Knebworth House, Hertfordshire County Archives, and Bibliothèque Nationale. At present, this research is being published as her first monograph with SUNY Press. It has also been presented in multiple locations across Europe including Latvia, Paris, Gothenburg, London, Edinburgh, and Amsterdam.

In 2024, Dr. Oates was awarded an SSHRC Insight Development Grant to research the resource economy of Newfoundland and Labrador. The project is aptly titled Cursed: How the Resource Curse Manifests in Newfoundland and Labrador. A frequent commentator in local and national media, she has been published in The Globe and Mail, The Hill Times, and Canada’s National Observer. She has also worked as a Senior Policy advisor in the Office of the Minister of Status of Women with Government of Canada. There she held files on decriminalization of sex work, women’s entrepreneurship, and pay equity.

Teaching

Dr. Oates regularly teaches courses in Sociology of Policing, Social Inequality, Deviance, Qualitative Research Methods, and Introduction to Sociology.

Affiliations

International Studies Association

Canadian Sociological Association 

Research 

“Imperial Occulture: The Theosophical Society and Transnational Cultures of Print”, The International History Review, 2021, Vol. 43(4), 815-835.

Forthcoming: ‘Gender and Climate Justice,’ Special Issue of Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, co-editor with Sritama Chatterjee. 

‘Cursed: How the resource curse manifests in Newfoundland and Labrador’, Network in Canadian History and Environment, February 10, 2025. https://niche-canada.org/2025/02/10/cursed-how-the-resource-curse-manifests-in-newfoundland-and-labrador/

‘The problem with Axe the Tax,’ Network in Canadian History and Environment, October 9, 2024. https://niche-canada.org/2024/10/09/the-problem-with-axe-the-tax/

‘The neocolonialism of using police to enforce problematic environmental policy’ for The Network in Canadian History and Environment, RCMP 150 series, May 10, 2023. https://niche-canada.org/2023/05/10/the-neocolonialism-of-using-police-to-enforce-problematic-environmental-policy/

‘Mega Dams – Part 3: The Atlantic Loop and the Green Energy Transition’, Network in Canadian History and Environment, October 27, 2022. https://niche-canada.org/2022/10/27/mega-dams-part-three-the-atlantic-loop-and-the-green-energy-transition/

‘Mega Dams – Part 2: The Global Contexts and Canadian Mega Dam Failures’, Network in Canadian History and Environment’, October 14, 2022. https://niche-canada.org/2022/10/14/mega-dams-part-two-the-global-contexts-and-canadian-mega-dam-failures/

‘Megadams – Part 1: A Tale of Muskrat Falls and Gull Island’, Network in Canadian History and Environment, October 7, 2022. https://niche-canada.org/2022/10/07/mega-dams-part-one-a-tale-of-muskrat-falls-and-gull-island/

‘Meghan Markel and the colonial roots of tabloid media’, Imperial and Global Forum, March 25, 2021. https://imperialglobalexeter.com/2021/03/25/meghan-markel-and-the-colonial-roots-of-tabloid-media/

‘When is colonialism a genocide? The case of Indigenous women and girls in Canada’, Imperial and Global Forum, July 4, 2019. https://imperialglobalexeter.com/2019/07/04/when-is-colonialism-a-genocide-the-case-of-indigenous-women-and-girls-in-canada/

Book Reviews

Review of Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World by Marc-William Palen for the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 25: 3 (2024).

Review of Empireworld: How Imperialism has Shaped the Globe by Santhnam Sanghera on ‘LSE Review of Books’, July 25, 2024, found online at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2024/07/25/book-review-empireworld-how-british-imperialism-has-shaped-the-globe-sathnam-sanghera/. 

Review of Eugene Lindon’s Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change from 1979 to present, for Environmental History, 2023, Vol. 28(3), 594-595.

Review of Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire by Caroline Ritter. Published on ‘LSE Review of Books’, July 2021, found online at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2021/07/29/book-review-imperial-encore-the-cultural-project-of-the-late-british-empire-by-caroline-ritter/.  

Review of The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age, by François Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux (Translated by Janice Egan and Michael Egan). Published in ‘Global Environmental Politics’, 2021, Vol. 21(3), 197-199. 

Media

The Signal: Is the ‘resource curse’ hindering the Newfoundland and Labrador economy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTEteZie2fk

Niche Conversations 2.9 Lori Lee Oates on ‘Climate change is colonialism’ https://jessicamdewitt.com/2022/02/05/niche-conversations-2-9-climate-change-is-colonialism-with-lori-lee-oates/

Interview with Ross Lord, Global National regarding the Bay du Nord oil and gas development, ran June 9, 2022.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWgS6j4EkfY

‘The global rise of the far right is coming home to Canada,’ Canada’s National Observer, December 19, 2024.

‘Oil and gas approvals spell ecocide,’ Canada’s National Observer, August 18, 2023.

‘Wildfire in N.L. are yet another sign we must move faster on climate change,’ Canada’s National Observer, August 15, 2022.

‘New research says leave 40 percent of existing fossil fuels in the ground,’ Canada’s National Observer, June 24, 2022.

‘Newfoundland and Labrador oil is neither low carbon nor ethical,’ Canada’s National Observer, June 6, 2022.

‘Canada could be the first country on Earth to pay international royalties’, Canada’s National Observer, May 11, 2022.

‘Newfoundland and Labrador’s culture helped it to achieve Canada’s highest vaccination rate’, The Globe and Mail, January 21, 2022.

‘Daughters of the Vote and gender equality in Canadian politics: The journey continues’, The Hill Times, March 3, 2021.

‘Everything old is new again in Newfoundland and Labrador’, The Globe and Mail, February 10, 2021.

‘Newfoundland and Labrador has a new premier: It is time to get real about how our money is being managed’, The Globe and Mail, August 28, 2020.