Carnegie Mellon University
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Noah Theriault

Noah Theriault

Associate Professor of Anthropology

  • Baker Hall 240 C
  • 412-268-9301

Bio

Noah Theriault is Associate Professor of Anthropology in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of History. As a political ecologist, he uses methods from anthropology, history, and geography to study how the globalization of capitalism shapes social and environmental inequality at the local level. His long-term research in the Philippines investigates these dynamics in both rural and urban settings, asking how bureaucrats, activists, scientists, farmers, workers, and other actors negotiate global forces of change in their everyday lives. He also works with scholars, practitioners, and advocates from around the world to explore how collaborative research can contribute to community organizing and collective action. 

Since 2006, Theriault’s research has tracked the collision of conservation, capitalism, and Indigenous rights in Palawan, an island widely coveted as the Philippines’ “last frontier.” His forthcoming book – A Forest of Dreams: Conservation, Capitalism, and Indigenous Rights in the Philippines (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025) – traces how Palawan families understand and seek to influence the institutions that have enclosed them within an ancestral domain, a protected landscape, and an expanding plantation zone. Informed by their analyses, the book argues that efforts to “save the last frontier” have reinforced, rather than reversed, long-term processes of colonization and capitalist expansion. But it also tells a story of unexpected agency and contingency, where humans, wildlife, and powerful forest beings complicate prevailing theories of social and environmental change.

Theriault is currently working on two newer projects. The first, previewed in Edge Effects, examines the politics of infrastructure in the Philippine capital, Manila, where the city’s apocalyptic traffic congestion has become a fulcrum for struggles over social and environmental inequality. The second, with Nida Rehman in CMU’s School of Architecture, aims to establish a community-based energy justice research agenda for Northern Appalachia.

These projects reflect a broader commitment to collaborative research that advances community organizing and collective action. In 2016, Theriault helped found an international network of Indigenous and allied researchers, who work together to foster relational, reciprocal, and regenerative spaces of knowledge creation. In 2020, he partnered with Alex Nading to lead a Wenner Gren workshop on “Collaborative Ecologies: Anthropologies of (and for) the More-Than-Human City” and, in 2021, published with Simi Kang a state-of-the-field article on “Toxic Research: Political Ecologies and the Matter of Damage.”

Currently, Theriault has served on the executive board of the Philippine Studies Group of the Association for Asian Studies, as co-convenor of the Environmental Humanities Research Seminar, and as Visiting Professor in the Indigenous Studies program at the University of the Philippines - Baguio. At CMU, he serves as the Faculty Advisor for the Anthropology Minor and co-organizer of the History Department Research Seminar.

Education

Ph.D.: University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2013

 

Publications

Capitalism, conservation, indigeneity

Collaborative research as collective action

Urban infrastructures, eco-authoritarianism, climate crisis

Commentary on current events

Courses Taught

  • Hostile Environments: The Politics of Pollution in Global Perspective
  • How (Not) to Change the World: Defining and Refining Theories of Change
  • Reformers, Revolutionaries, and Revanchists: Histories of Social Movements
  • Global Studies Research Seminar (capstone)
  • Modern Southeast Asia: Colonialism, Capitalism, and Cultural Exchange
  • Un-Natural Disasters: Societies and Environmental Hazards in Global Perspective
  • Introduction to Global Studies

 

Department Member Since: 2017