Candis Callison

Candis Callison is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous journalism, media, and public discourse, and an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. She is also an associate faculty in the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media. Her research and teaching are focused on changes to media practices, the rise and persistence of Indigenous journalism on digital platforms, journalism ethics, the role of Indigenous and environment-focused social movements in public discourse, and understanding how climate change becomes meaningful for diverse publics.

Candis is the co-author of Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities (Oxford University Press, 2020), which draws on five years of research with journalists in the U.S. and Canada at a variety of news organizations including startups, legacy media, and freelancers. For more on this book, see this interview in The Narwhal or listen to this two-part interview on Media Indigena.

Candis’ first book, How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts (Duke University Press, 2014) used ethnographic methods and a comparative lens to bring together the work of science journalists, scientists, and three distinct social groups that are outside environmental movement and policy frameworks in an American context.

Candis is Tahltan (Tałtan), an Indigenous people located in what is now Northwestern British Columbia. She is a regular contributor on the podcast, Media Indigena. She is also a founding board member of Tu’dese’cho Wholistic Indigenous Leadership Development Society (T-WILD), the first Tałtan non-government organization, created to provide Tałtan people with land-based learning, leadership development, and cultural programming. In 2020, as part of T-WILD, Candis was a contributor to Our Ancestors’ Trail Exhibition at UBC.

An alumna of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Candis holds a Ph.D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, and a Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies.  She was the speaker at MIT’s 2018 Investiture of Doctoral Hoods. In 2019, she became a member of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Candis was also a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Fellow from 2019-2021.

Prior to her academic work, Candis produced, wrote, and reported for television, the Internet, and radio in Canada (CBC, CTV) and the United States (Lycos, Tech TV). Candis was the original host and co-creator of First Story, the first news and current affairs series on Indigenous issues to be broadcast nationally in Canada on CTV; it was later syndicated to APTN. In 2020, Candis was the recipient of the Bill Good Award from the Jack Webster Foundation, which “honours a B.C. individual or organization that makes a significant contribution to journalism in the province, or addresses a community’s needs and benefits via journalism.”