Julie S. Byrd

Dr. Julie S. Byrd, PhD

Associate Professor - Critical Policy, Equity and Leadership Studies

BA Honours (SUNY College at Oswego), MA (University of Illinois at U-C), MA (University of Maryland), MA (Naropa University), PhD (University of Toronto)

Dr. Julie S. Byrd, PhD

Associate Professor - Critical Policy, Equity and Leadership Studies

BA Honours (SUNY College at Oswego), MA (University of Illinois at U-C), MA (University of Maryland), MA (Naropa University), PhD (University of Toronto)

Julie S. Byrd is Professor of Indigenous Education at the Faculty of Education of Western University. Julie is of Indigenous ancestry (Cherokee of the Eastern woodlands; and Chickasaw).  She is a descendent of William L. Byrd (former governor of the Chickasaw Nation, 1888-1892) and through retracing has found that her more closely related ancestors spoke a similar language to the Haudenosaunee languages (Six Nations) of Turtle Island. Julie is likewise of Celtic and Mediterranean ancestry as well as a distant descendant of the Bantu Peoples of Cameroon/The Congo. A lover of nature, languages, and multiple ways of communing, Julie infuses indigenous knowledges and practices throughout her research, teaching, and learning, particularly as relates to language use, relational attunement, and an openness to social and linguistic variation. Her passion for music, singing, dancing, storytelling and drama are all important components of her pedagogy.

Julie, also known as Julie Byrd Clark, is an internationally recognized applied linguist with expertise in the domains of critical sociolinguistics, bi/multilingual intercultural education, didactique du français, language planning/policy, discourse analysis, postmodern, and ecopsychological approaches for the study of language, communication, teaching and learning. A transdisciplinary and multilingual scholar, much of her work has engaged critical, multimodal, ecological, and reflexive approaches to language and intercultural education as relates to indigeneity, processes of decolonialization, systemic racism, globalization, environmental justice, sustainability, accessibility, and the construction of identity and social difference.

As an ethnographer, sociolinguist, and teacher, she draws upon creative research methodologies in order to capture some of the complexities, connections, curiosities, and representations of people’s ways of communing in their everyday lives. She specializes in Indigenous methodologies, earth-based practices, transpersonal ecopsychology; immersion education; language teacher education; multilingualism; critical, social and environmental facets of language and intercultural education; transnationalism, and social justice as concerns the construction of ideologies and axiologies.

Currently, Julie is working with interspirituality, ecotranslanguaging (e.g. inter-species communication; Indigenous languages resurgence and regeneration ), ecopedagogies, place-based attuning/attunement and advocates for a community-oriented leadership approach in fostering responsible, reciprocal relationships that honour all life-- reminding people of their connections to the Earth, one another, and the more-than-human world.