My research and teaching focus on territoriality, occupation, and empire in western Canada and the non-contiguous US with a focus on the aftermath of Asian migration (wartime forced relocation) in the Indigenous Pacific.

In my current book project, I theorize repair through transpacific redress movements which coalesce around the preservation and stewardship of Second World War confinement landscapes in Hawai’i, Alaska and British Columbia. I work alongside community organizations, cultural heritage professionals, and policymakers and draw insights from archival research and place-based research methods including architectural drawing and photography. Broadly, my research contributes to ongoing debates on infrastructural and labour histories, war reparations, Asian-Indigenous relations, land tenure in settler colonial contexts, and environmental histories of Second World War confinement sites in former US territories and in western Canada.

I joined UBC in 2022 as an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department and as an Affiliated Faculty in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program (ACAM).

2023 (forthcoming)

Valadares, D. 2023. Thinking Like a Gulch: Pacific War Heritage, Settler Lands and Toxic Uncertainties in O‘ahu. Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative. Toxics Project.

Valadares, D. 2023. Uneven Mobilities: Infrastructural Imaginaries on The Hope-Princeton Highway. The Radical History Review. Duke University Press. Special Issue: The Politics of Infrastructure (147).

Valadares, D. 2023.  Economies and Circuits of Repair: On Reparative Justice Within/Beyond the State: An Interview with Jovan Scott Lewis. Journal of Architectural Education. Special Issue: Reparations! 77 (1).

Valadares, D. Gandhi, E. Jeychandran, N. and A. Murphy. 2023. Theorizing Transits: Im/mobility, Im/materiality, Im/permanence. In Verge Global Asias: Tactics and Theories for a Global Asias Praxis, edited by  T. Chen and C. Eubanks. University of Hawaii Press.

2022

Valadares, D. 2022. Conjuring the Commons: National Monuments as Technical Lands. In Technical Lands: A Critical Primer, edited by C. Waldheim and J. Nesbit. JOVIS Verlag.

2021

Valadares, D. 2021. Unsettling “Historic Integrity” at Honouliuli National Heritage Site, O’ahu, Hawai’i. Change Over Time 10(2): 178-182. doi: doi:10.1353/cot.2021.0008.

Prior to my appointment at UBC in July 2022, I published creative work, photography, and writing in The Funambulist Magazine: Politics of Space and Bodies, Places Journal, and The Avery Review. I also contributed chapters to edited volumes, co-authored cultural landscape assessments and made architectural drawings according to HABS/HALS Historic American Buildings and Landscapes standards.

Please email me if you are interested in working with me on a MA project related to environmental, infrastructural, oceanic, or architectural histories. I look forward to mentoring students with an interest in archival research, historical methods, and public and community-engaged commitments. I am especially keen to support architects, designers, artists, among others who aspire to produce creative, and experimental research outputs.