If you would like your or your advisee’s dissertation listed here, please email editors [at] discardstudies.com

Dissertations and theses are listed in chronological order:

Berry, Brieanne. (2021). Discards & Diverse Economies: Reuse in Rural Maine. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maine.

Kuyvenhoven, Cassandra. (2021). Moving waste around: Unpacking how socio-political decisions are made about municipal solid waste and its transportation. Doctoral dissertation, Queen’s University.

Landia, Niva. (2021). “MATERIA INSTABILE: UNA LETTURA ANTROPOLOGICA DEI RIFIUTI AI TEMPI DELL’ANTROPOCENE/Unstable matter: an anthropological reading of waste at the time of the Anthropocene.” Thesis, Universita Degli Studi Di Milano-Biocca.

Newton, Robert. (2021). ‘Insidious Pollen’: Literature and Industrial Toxicity, 1935-Present. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge.

Satyawan, Akshata. (2021). Critical Assessment of Circular Economy Regarding Waste Reduction and Optimal Use of Resources. Private University of Applied Sciences.

Degray, Amanda (2020) Indigenous risk perceptions and land-use in Yellowknife, NT. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Elander, Angelina. (2020). Racism in environmental communication about plastic pollution. (Master’s thesis, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences).

Fried, Talia. (2020) “It’s Not Just Garbage—It’s Waste”: Conceptualizing the Social, Historical and Epistemic Grounds of Municipal Solid Waste Treatment in Israel. (Doctoral Dissertation: Bar Ilan University)

Lampel, Linda. (2020). Value Capture and Distribution in Second-Hand Clothing Trade. (Master’s thesis: Universität Wien)

Monje, Luis. (2020). A short conundrum on material waste defamiliarization and creative accessibility. Master’s Thesis, Aalto University. Keywords: waste, defamiliarization, value, creativity, alienation, resources

Mujezinovic, Davor. (2020). The global industrial metabolism of e-waste trade: A Marxian ecological economics approach (Doctoral dissertation, Lancaster University).

Nguyen, Alisa. (2020). Ocean Plastics: How marine litter shapes the lives of residents of Cu Lao Cham Marine Protected Area, Vietnam. (MA Thesis, University of Guelph).

Peterson, Jesse. (2020). Excessive Seas: Waste Ecologies of Eutrophication. (Doctoral Dissertation, KTH Royal Institute of Technology).

Singer, Gideon. A. (2020). An Applied Anthropology of Electronic Waste in Central Australia (Doctoral dissertation, Purdue University Graduate School).

Wittmer, Josie. (2020). Women’s work in the ‘clean city’: Perspectives on wellbeing, waste governance, and inclusion from the urban margins in Ahmedabad, India. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Guelph.

Akese, Grace A. (2019). Electronic waste (e-waste) science and advocacy at Agbogbloshie: the making and effects of “The world’s largest e-waste dump,” (Doctoral dissertation, Memorial University of Newfoundland).

Barr, Jen. (2019). Private Acts, Public Stories: Sanitation NGOs during the ‘Clean India’ Mission. Emory.

de Araújo, Vanbasten Noronha (2019). Shimmery waste: A queer critique of the narratives on glitter pollution. (Doctoral dissertation, Central European University).

Gorman, Sarah Magdelene. (2019). The Role of Waste in Modern Political Philosophy. Doctoral dissertation, Vanderbilt University.

Papadaki Anastasopoulou, Artemis Anna. (2019). Plastic matters : material politics of plastic at the Environment Agency Austria. (MA thesis, University of Vienna).

Power, Ellen. (2019). Memories of Mistrust and Contamination: The Legacies of Cosmos 954 and Operation Morning Light in Denendeh. MA Thesis, University of Toronto.

Atutxa, Ibai. (2018). Toxic Criminalities in Francoist Spain the Making of a European Dictatorship. PhD diss., Columbia University.

Burch, Karly A. (2018). Eating a nuclear disaster: A vital institutional ethnography of everyday eating in the aftermath of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster Doctoral dissertation: University of Otago.

Corwin, Julia. (2018). Circuits of capital: India’s electronic waste in the informal global economy. PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota.

Ferrero, A. E. (2018). Food Waste, Food Insecurity, and Food Donation Liability. University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects. http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/2216

Gerola, Alessio. (2018). Globalizing human-technology relations: an examination of the technosphere through the concept of waste. MA Thesis, University of Twente.

Handley, Laura. (2018). Recycling or Relegating? Examining the Effects of the International Second-Hand Clothing Trade using the Greater Accra Region of Ghana as Case Study. Webster University Senior Thesis.

Krishnan, T. S. (2018). Understanding e-waste reverse supply chain and formalization of informal e-waste processors: a qualitative case study. (Doctoral dissertation, Indian Institute of Management (IIMB))

Mangeon, Michaël (2018). Conception et évolution du régime français de régulation de la sûreté nucléaire (1945-2017) à la lumière de ses instruments : une approche par le travail de régulation. PhD Dissertation, PSL Research University

Persaud, Donny. (2018). Behind breakdown: the case of the MV Veteran. MA Thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Sicherman, M. (2018). “Forgotten by God”: How the People of Barren Island Built a Thriving Community on New York City’s Garbage. Thesis. Brooklyn College.

Adkins, S. (2017). From Disposable Culture to Disposable People: Teaching About the Unintended Consequences of Plastics. PhD diss., Antioch University.

Beckett, C. (2017). Rethinking remediation: Mine closure and community engagement at the Giant Mine, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada (MA Thesis). Department of Geography, Memorial University.

Bolt, Isabelle. (2017). Recreating Waste as a Creative Concern. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Manchester).

Cahill, Collin William. (2017). Feral Natures and Excremental Commodities: Purity, Scale, and the More-than-Human in Indonesia. Doctoral dissertation, UC Irvine.

De Rosa, S. (2017). Reclaiming Territory from Below: Grassroots Environmentalism and Waste Conflicts in Campania, Italy. (Doctoral dissertation, Lund University).

Demaria, F. (2017). Social metabolism, cost-shifting and conflicts: The struggles and services of informal waste recyclers (Doctoral dissertation, Autonomous University of Barcelona).

DeLorenzo, A. (2017). Closing the Loop, or Running in Circles? Assessing Food Waste Policy in Ontario (Doctoral dissertation, University of Guelph).

Lougheed, S. C. (2017). Disposing of Risk: The Biopolitics of Recalled Food and the (Un)Making of Waste. PhD diss., Queen’s University.

Massaro, S. (2017). Strategie urbane integrate per affrontare la crisi dei rifiuti urbani. Nuove opportunità per un’architettura civica. (PhD Dissertation). Architecture Theories and Design, Sapienza University of Rome

Pollans, L. B. (2017). Wasteways: regimes and resistance on the path to sustainable urban infrastructure (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Tuçaltan, G. (2017). Metabolic Urbanization of Waste in Ankara: A Governance Perspective. Dissertation. Rotterdam: Eburon.

Gibbons, Sarah. (2016). Disablement, Diversity, Deviation: Disability in an Age of Environmental Risk. PhD Dissertation: University of Waterloo.

Srigyan, P. (2016). Delhi’s Air: Histories, Technologies, and Futures. (MA Thesis, Ambedkar University, Delhi).

Tietjen, J. M. (2016). “Unbearable Stench”: Excremental Violence in Holocaust Literature. Brandeis University.

Guitard, Emile. (2015). “The Great Chief Must Be Like The Great Trash Pile”: Waste Management And Power Relations in The Cities of Garoua and Maroua (Cameroon). Ecole doctorale Milieux, cultures et sociétés du passé et du présent (Nanterre),

Jensen, C. K. (2015). The Rhetoric of Circular Economy in the Textile Industry.

Johnston, Emily C. (2015) Poisoned Subjects- Testimonial Justice in Toxic Life Narrative. PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan.

Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. (2015). Waste and the Phantom State: The Emergence of the Environment in Post-Oslo Palestine. PhD Dissertation,Columbia University.

Wallsten, B. (2015).  The Urk World – Hibernating Infrastructures and the Quest for Urban Mining. (Doctoral Dissertation). Linköping University.

Wishart, Lucy. (2015). A Resourceful Aspiration: Understanding the Governmentality of Zero Waste in Scotland. PhD Dissertation. University of St. Andrews.

Zahara, Alex. (2015) The Governance of Waste in Iqaluit, Nunavut. (MES Thesis). Queen’s University.

Akese, Grace (2014). Price realization for electronic waste (e-waste) in Accra, Ghana. (MA Thesis) Memorial University.

Offenhuber, Dietmar. (2014). Participatory infrastructure monitoring : design factors and limitations of accountability technologies. (Doctoral Dissertation) MIT.

Terreni Brown, S. E. (2014). Kampala’s shitscape: exploring urbanity and sanitation in Uganda. Thesis, University of Edinburgh.

Pfeifer, Patrick F. (2013). Dynamic decomposition: A creative rearrangement of ” waste” (Doctoral dissertation, Northern Arizona University).

Calcote, Joshua C. (2012). An Assessment of Post-Disaster Psychological Stress in Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) Workers. (Doctoral Dissertation) The University of Texas School of Public Health.

Furniss, Jamie. (2012). Metaphors of Waste: Several Ways of Seeing “Development” and Cairo’s Garbage Collectors. (Doctoral Dissertation) University College.

Liboiron, Max. (2012). Redefining Pollution: Plastics in the Wild. (Doctoral Dissertation) New York University.

Pineo, Chris. (2012) In the Garden of the Apocalypse: Narrating Myth and Reality in the Hanford Landscape. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Washington.

Viney, Will. (2012). Waste Effects: Building, Writing and Collecting.(Doctoral Dissertation) University of London.

Yates, Michelle Lynn. (2012). Ecological Crisis: Nature, Labor, and the Historical Specificity of Capitalism. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of California, Davis.

Farah, Leila Marie. (2011). Food Paths, Architecture and Urban Form. A Case Study. (Doctoral Dissertation) McGill University (Canada).

Kedzior, Sya Buryn. (2011). Pollution Knowledge and Urban Water Politics in the Ganges River Basin (India). (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Kentucky.

MacKendrick, Norah (2011) The Individualization of Risk as Responsibility and Citizenship: A Case Study of Chemical Body Burdens. PhD thesis, University of Toronto, Canada.

Steere-Williams, Jacob. (2011). The Perfect Food and the Filth Disease: Milk, Typhoid Fever, and the Science of State Medicine in Victorian Britain, 1850-1900. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Minnesota.

Shamasunder, B. (2011). Body Burden Politics: How Biomonitoring Data is Influencing Chemicals Governance in the US. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of California, Berkeley.

Feinstein, Eve Samara. (2010). Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible. (Doctoral Dissertation) Harvard University.

Freer, Brian. (2010). Future Remains: Industrial Heritage at the Hanford Plutonium Works. (Doctoral Dissertation) York University.

Lou, Jingjing. (2010). The School Wall Crumbles: Pollution, Townization, and the Changing Ecology of Rural Schooling in Northwest China. Indiana University.

Gambetta, Curt. (2009). Making Waste Public. (Doctoral Dissertation) Rice University.

Anderson, Jessica. (2008). Fueling a Body’s Politics: Freegans, Food and Refuse. (Masters Thesis) New York University.

Bruce, Kristy Wasserbach. (2008). Waste, Worship and Cricket: Bridging Phytoremediation and Ethnobotany on Recreational Landscapes in India. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Colorado at Denver.

Dokko, Misun Michelle. (2008). Dirty Bodies: Filth and Marginal Characters in Asian American Literature. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Maryland, College Park.

Lincoln, Sarah L. (2008). Expensive Shit: Aesthetic Economies of Waste in Postcolonial Africa. (Doctoral Dissertation)Duke University.

Reno, Josh. (2008). Out of Place: Possibility and Pollution at a Transnational Landfill. (Doctoral  dissertation) University of Michigan.

Dillon, Jennifer Reed. (2007). Modernity, Sanitation and the Public Bath: Berlin, 1896–1933, as Archetype. (Doctoral Dissertation) Duke University.

Gravano, Alan Joseph. (2006). The Transfiguration of the Discarded: Consumption and Waste in Wallace Stevens, A. R. Ammons, Don DeLillo, and Martin Scorsese. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Miami.

Merrill, Derek Schwartz. (2006) Abject Americans: Waste, Obsolescence, and Strategies of Recycling in Twentieth-Century American Literature. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Florida.

Kendall, Tina Suzanne. (2005). Making Waste: Disposable Culture and the Cultural Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century French Literature and Film. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of California, Davis.

Vostral, S. L. (2004). Conspicuous menstruation: the history of menstruation and menstrual hygiene products in America, 1870-1960 (Doctoral dissertation).

Sivulka, Juliann. (2000). Stronger than Dirt: A Cultural History of Advertising Personal Hygiene in America, 1875 to 1940.  (Doctoral Dissertation) Bowling Green State University.

Yang, Jung Hye. (1999). Mainstreaming America and Media Hegemony: How Network Television News has Constructs the Meanings of the Industrial Toxic Waste Movement. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Minnesota.

Shea, Jo Anne. (1998).  Productive Waste: Rhetorical Economies in Thomas Middleton’s City Comedies. (Doctoral Dissertation) The University of Texas at Austin.

Slater, Janet S. (1998). Trash to Treasures: A Qualitative Study of the Relationship between Collectors and Collectible Brands. (Doctoral Dissertation) Syracuse University.

Lin, Tan Anthony. (1995). Garbage, Truth, and the Recycling of Modern Life. (Doctoral Dissertation) Columbia University.

Bacot, Alan Hunter. (1992). Mass Images of Environmental Problems: Network News Coverage of Waste Issues, 1975-1990. (Doctoral Dissertation) The University of Tennessee.

Del, Rosario Cabral (1992). Garbage Housing in Informal Settlements. (Doctoral Dissertation) McGill University (Canada).

Jenner, Mark S. R. (1992). Early Modern English Conceptions of Cleanliness and Dirt as Reflected in the Environmental Regulation of London, c. 1530-c. 1700. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Oxford (United Kingdom).

Hamlin, Christopher. (1987) What becomes of pollution?: Adversary science and the controversy on the self-purification of rivers in Britain, 1850-1900. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of Wisconsin at Madison.