Shoutao Wu (Vincent)

Shoutao Wu (Vincent) works at the intersection of environmental governance, decolonial climate justice, and epistemological pluralism. His master’s research critically examines carbon neocolonialism, material and epistemic, embedded in carbon offsetting, while exploring relational, embodied, and place-based forms of climate knowledge production through reflexive, art-based, and collaborative methodologies.

 

As a Chinese queer transmigrant scholar in the United States, his work is shaped by ongoing engagements with Feminist, Queer, Latinx, Black Feminist, and Indigenous geographies, while reflexively negotiating with his own positionalities. He is particularly interested in how pluralistic epistemologies emerge through different forms of spatial embodiment and bodily emplacement, and how processes of transmigration, translation, and transcultural negotiation can inform alternative approaches to critical and decolonial geographical scholarship.

 

He is particularly interested in the spatial triangulation of Latin America, China, and the US, and the ontological triangulation of Latinx, Asianx, and Indigeneity. He is actively learning Southern Quechua, an Andean Indigenous language, to build the linguistic foundation for respectful and responsible engagement with place-based and transcultural epistemologies.

 

As a self-trained photographer and filmmaker, he incorporates image and documentary storytelling as core methods in his research and research communication. He has recently graduated from the MFA Design for Responsible Innovation program and will continue his studies as a Ph.D. student in Geography at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.