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December 10, 2026

What Queer Beavers Know About Surviving Apocalypse: 2026 Award for Dissertation Research

  • December 10, 2026
  • 12pm Eastern
  • Online
  • Free
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Andrew Wiebe is the winner of the 2026 Litwin Books Award for Ongoing Dissertation Research in the Philosophy of Information.

Join us as we hear more about his dissertation, Lii Lozh di Kaastor: What Queer Beavers Know About Surviving Apocalypse

From the Award Committee announcement:

“Wiebe’s project attempts to extend and archival theory and practice to take account of Indigenous oral practices and ways of knowing. Wiebe relates the work of building beaver lodges with intentional acts of resistance and blockade, as an ‘invitation into Indigenous cosmology’ that ‘honours Indigenous cultures and challenges archival gaps by bridging different memory systems’.”

“Wiebe’s ambitious, original, and multidimensional proposal combines a significant theoretical intervention with a concrete, participant-led archival project and embeds its research methods within commitments to community authority, consent, refusal, and data sovereignty. The beaver dam as a blockade offers a memorable framework through which Wiebe reconceives preservation as regenerative world-building rather than the maintenance of existing institutional structures.”

Presenter Info

Andrew Wiebe

Andrew Wiebe (he/them) is a Two-Spirit Red River Michif (MMF) PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His doctoral project, Lii Lozh di Kaastor (The Beaver Lodge), is a community-grounded archival project developed with Two-Spirit Elders, Knowledge Keepers, archivists, librarians, and community collaborators. The project includes an interactive digital atlas that brings together dispersed Two-Spirit histories and situates them in relation to place, community, and archival context.

His dissertation examines what the process of building the Atlas reveals about Indigenous archival practice, relational research, community review, and digital stewardship. Drawing on Métis and Indigenous methodologies, archival theory, and teachings from amisk (beaver), the research considers how archival infrastructures can remain open to correction, refusal, and changing community relationships.