Max Liboiron is a Canadian researcher and designer known for their contributions to the study of plastic pollution and citizen science.^[1][2]

Liboiron directs the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), an interdisciplinary plastic pollution laboratory based at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.^[3] Liboiron was the Managing Editor of the online journal Discard Studies for nearly a decade,^[4] which publishes research on industrial waste and its social, political, cultural, and economic implications.^[5]

Liboiron is professor of geography at Memorial, with cross-appointments to the university's Department of Sociology, Environmental Sciences, and the Fisheries and Marine Institute. From 2018 to 2020, they served as Memorial's inaugural Associate Vice-president, Indigenous Research.^[6]

Liboiron and their lab have created several research methods aimed to bring humility, accountability, and good land relations into research.^[7][8] These include: community peer review, where people who are impacted by research are part of the review process to validate and publish research;^[9] returning biological samples back to the land;^[10] university-level policies requiring consent from Indigenous groups to engage in research on their lands and communities;^[11] and a legal contract for Indigenous data sovereignty where Indigenous groups own and control how data about their lands, people, and culture are used.^[11]

Liboiron has invented build-it-yourself tools for monitoring marine plastic pollution, including a device called BabyLegs. The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum exhibited BabyLegs as part of its Nature—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial from May 2019 to January 2020, which recognized designers "forging meaningful connections between humanity and the Earth".^[12][13]

Liboiron is a proponent of the Global Open Science Hardware (GOSH) movement, which argues that high equipment costs and intellectual property restrictions stifle scientific progress.^[14]

An example of Liboiron's equity in academia is deciding author order by consensus; valuing care work and other forms of labour that are usually left out of scientific value systems; and taking intersectional social standing into account.^[15][16] Other examples include using anti-oppressive facilitation to run lab meetings, and consensus-based decision making in the lab.^[17]

• Ecocide
• Environmental dumping
• Environmental justice
• Environmental racism
• Global environmental inequality
• Global waste trade
• Rights of nature
• Sacrifice zone
• Toxic colonialism

• 2015 Next Generation Polar Researchers, Memorial University of Newfoundland^[19]
• 2015 Making and Doing Prize, Society for the Social Studies of Science^[20]
• 2018 Nature Inspiration Award (adult category), Canadian Museum of Nature^[21]
• 2019–present Circle Holder, Science for the People^[22]
• 2020-2021 Distinguished Visiting Indigenous Faculty Research Fellow, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto^[23]