Chantal Noa Forbes

Chantal Noa Forbes, PhD, is a transdisciplinary scholar, storyteller, and educator at the intersection of ecology, spirituality, and culture. Her work explores the environmental significance of Indigenous and decolonial perspectives on multispecies ontology, more-than-human personhood, and cultural sovereignty. Chantal graduated with a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she applied decolonial approaches to the narrative-based analysis of environmental engagement – focused on the ontological ambiguity of human-animal relationships in hunter-gatherer cosmology in Southern Africa. Chantal teaches anthropology at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and is adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she lectures on decolonial pedagogies and research design, Indigenous lifeways and ecology, relational ontologies, and the metaphysics of human-animal relations. Before completing her Ph.D., Chantal spent twenty years working in documentary film, educational media, and communications across Africa, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe. www.chantalnoa.com