Fellows and Associates | The Harriet Tubman Institute

Anna Zalik

falicia — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 20:14:26 +0000

Dr Zalik’s research examines and critiques the political economy and political ecology of oil, gas ,and other extractives, with a focus on the merging of corporate security and social welfare interventions in strategic exporters, particularly Nigeria, Mexico, and Canada. Another area of research concerns the relationship between popular resistance to extraction and risk analysis as carried out by global financial institutions, and their relationship to the spatial reorganization of energy and extractive infrastructure.

Research keywords: Political economy; critical development studies; extraction

Agnès Berthelot-Raffard

alexall5 — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 05:07:37 +0000

Dr Agnès Berthelot-Raffard is an assistant professor in the School of Health Policy & Management at �첥��Ƶ. She is a political philosopher who earned her PhD in Philosophy from Pantheon-Sorbonne and Université de Montréal. Her research expertise is Black Health studies, Black political thought, Black feminist thought, and Black Disability Studies.

She is interested in understanding how anti-Black racism impacts all the dimensions of health and well-being. Currently, she is working on two major projects.

She is leading pan-Canadian research on Black students' mental health, for which she founded a non-profit organization, The Black Students' Mental Health Project (BSMHP). Funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, this PanCanadian project is based on partnerships between academia, community organizations, and sectors intervening in psycho-social health. Its approach to equity and social justice seeks to confront systemic barriers faced by Black in Canadian universities by implementing innovative research based on a culturally relevant approach and aimed at the social participation and capacity-building of students and intellectuals from Black communities.

Dr Berthelot-Raffard is also leading community-based research on Black women's reproductive health. In addition to this, as a creator of the first accredited university course in the francophone world devoted entirely to Black Feminist thought/afro feminist studies (in 2017, at Montréal, Quebec), she also continues to work intensively developing this field of study in French.

Her area of interest is epistemological, philosophical and political issues regarding Black women in Canada, France and the French Caribbean.

Henry Gomez

alexall5 — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 04:58:40 +0000

Henry Gomez is an educator, who was formerly employed by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) as a high school teacher; and was nominated for a Teacher- of-The-Year award. He specialized in English Literature, Media Studies and Drama. He holds an MFA in Theatre and a BA in English from �첥��Ƶ and obtained his B. Ed from the University of Toronto. He believes in lifelong learning. After retirement from active teaching, he returned to York, where he recently defended his master’s thesis in Interdisciplinary Studies.

He was born and grew up in Princes Town, Trinidad and Tobago, where he began his career in education. As an actor, composer, recording artiste and radio host, he has an extensive background in various aspects of the performing arts in Canada and internationally.

He has worked in radio, television, film and theatre; and has hosted shows on CFRB 1010 and CIUT 89.5 FM. He has also worked as a theatre director and Master of Ceremonies. Under his sobriquet, King Cosmos, he became a Canadian Calypso Monarch, the winner of a Canadian Urban Music Award and a Canadian Reggae Music Award. He is also a Sunshine Award nominee. His community service includes helping to develop the Caribbean cultural arts in Toronto. He is a founding member and first Chair/Secretary of the Organization of Calypso Performing Artistes (OCPA) and a past Chair of the Caribana Arts Group. For the period 2012 to 2014, he led the team that produced the Flags and Colours children’s carnival for residents of the Jane and Finch community in Toronto. Henry looks forward to working for the betterment of the Harriet Tubman Institute.

Patricia Elaine Perkins

alexall5 — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 04:53:28 +0000

I am an ecological economist concerned with climate justice: addressing global inequities while advancing the energy transition. I am interested in the political ecology of commons governance, local economies, and energy transitions; feminist theory and practice in times of climate change; and metals and minerals resources for the green transition. I teach courses in Ecological Economics, Community Economic Development, and interdisciplinary qualitative research design. I often work with students pursuing research themes related to climate justice, local economic development, trade and the environment, water management, and feminist ecological economics. I was the Lead Author for the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chapter on "Demand, Services, and Social Aspects of Mitigation."

Research keywords:climate justice; political ecology; ecology; economy; environment; governance; metal markets; participatory watershed management; trade and environment

Collette Murray

alexall5 — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 04:46:30 +0000

Collette Murray is a dance educator and cultural arts programmer with a performance background ranged in Caribbean Folk, traditional West African, and other diasporic dance styles with Toronto-based companies. Murray holds a Master of Education and Specialized Honours BA in Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity from �첥��Ƶ, and a Sociology BA from University of Toronto.

Her graduate research centered on perspectives of Black arts educators’ experiences using culturally responsive teaching in Ontario, Canada.

Her artistry includes teaching, arts education, mentorship, research, and community arts engagement. This award-winning artist is recognized as one of 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women honorees in 2020, 2019 recipient of the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Community Arts Award, and Canadian Dance Assembly’s 2013 recipient of the “I love Community” Award.

Along with Miss Coco Murray, her mobile, dance education business, Murray also is the Artistic Director of Coco Collective offering culturally-responsive projects connecting participants, organizations, and schools to African and Caribbean arts. Murray is a contributing writer published in dance media.

Her advocacy includes serving on the National Council for Canadian Dance Assembly, the Board of Directors for Arts Etobicoke, and Dance Umbrella of Ontario (DUO) to bring an equity, education, and inclusion lens to their organizations. Murray pursues a PhD in Dance Studies at �첥��Ƶ with focus on dance education pedagogies and mentorship that can impact the Canadian African diasporic dance sector.

Research keywords: Africanist dances in diaspora; culturally responsive teaching; dance; dance education pedagogies; diasporas; education

Danielle Howard

alexall5 — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 04:41:30 +0000

Dr Danielle A. D. Howard joins AMPD as an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre. She recently taught within the University of California-Los Angeles' School of Theater, Film and Television before coming to �첥��Ƶ. Dr. Howard holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from UCLA and writes at the intersections of race, gender, performance, visual and sonic culture. She is currently working on a manuscript titled Making Moves: Race, Basketball, and Embodied Resistance that spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The project foregrounds Black basketball players’ virtuosic and improvisational movements as oriented towards a kinetic knowledge of freedom and akin to contemporaneous jazz aesthetics. Other recent research includes the speculative lives of nineteenth and twentieth-century Black performers. Dr. Howard’s article, "The (Afro) Future of Henry Box Brown: His-story of Escape(s) through Time and Space" won TDR’s (The Drama Review) Graduate Student Essay Contest Award and appears in their September 2021 issue.

Originally from the United States with training in music, dance, and theatre, Howard's move to Toronto inspires her continued pursuit of her artistic and intellectual curiosity by engaging art-based research practices. She is invested in improving the health and resilience of her communities through their participation in the collective making of artistic expressions with different forms of embodied art. As a certified Social-Emotional Arts (SEA) Facilitator, she hopes to organize community programs that use dance, music, and theatre to facilitate healing, inner peace, and self-expression as well as inform the public on various topics.

Research keywords: Black performance; embodiment; gender; improvisation; movement; popular culture; race; sport

Violet Ferreira Sutherland

alexall5 — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 04:36:01 +0000

Violet Ferreira Sutherland is a doctoral student at �첥��Ƶ. Her research interest is in Policy and Banking in the social-solidarity economy (SSE). Violet holds an MBA in Finance (Western Michigan University, USA), MPhil in Gender and Development Studies (University of the West Indies, Mona), Post Graduate Certification in Project Management (Centennial College, Canada), and a BA in Economics & History (UWI). Violet worked as an Associate Professor in Finance at Northern Caribbean University and Adjunct Lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies. She has also worked as a Diversity and Inclusion Consultant for a variety of International Development Agencies such as the European Union, UN Women, UNDP, CARICOM, and the Caribbean Development Bank. More recently, she finalized the National Strategic Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence (2017–2027) in Jamaica, along with its Implementation Plan, which was approved in the Parliament of Jamaica for joint implementation by the Bureau of Gender Affairs and UN Women.

Research keywords: Banks; economy; policies; social science; social-solidairty economy

Denielle A. Elliott

alexall5 — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 17:20:00 +0000

Denielle A. Elliott is Associate Professor at �첥��Ƶ in the Departments of Anthropology and Social Science. She is currently the Graduate Program Director for the Science and Technology Studies program. She is a founding member of the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography. Her research for the large part focuses on arts-based ethnography and the intersections of colonialism, medicine and science, and politics. She has conducted fieldwork in British Columbia (Vancouver's Downtown Eastside on HIV/AIDS, epidemiological surveillance and colonial health) and in Nairobi and Kisumu, Kenya (‘Safari Science’, experimental medicine, scientific infrastructure, and the politics of transnational science).

Her current project entitled "Neurological Imaginaries" explores the sensorial and affective dimensions of traumatic brain injuries.

Her recent book publication, (Routledge 2019), is a collaborative account of immunologist Davy Koech's life's work building bioscientific infrastructure in Kenya and his relationship with former president Daniel arap Moi.

She is co-editor with Anna Harris of the with Somatosphere.

Research keywords: Anthropology; art;arts-based ethnography; intersections of colonialism; medicine and science

Woldegebriel Assefa Woldegerima

alexall5 — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 14:43:25 +0000

My full name is Woldegebriel “Assefa” Woldegerima. I am a newer faculty member as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at �첥��Ƶ as of July 2021. Before my recruitment to �첥��Ƶ, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Mathematical Models and Methods in Biosciences and Bioengineering Lab at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. I obtained my PhD in Mathematical Biology from the University of Buea, Cameroon in a collaboration with Lehigh University in the USA. I earned two master’s degrees: one from the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) with a master thesis in partial differential equations, and a second master of science degree from Addis Abeba University in Ethiopia in Functional Analysis. I have also worked as an Assistant professor at Mekelle University in Ethiopia, as a Predoctoral Research Associate at Lehigh University, as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Pretoria, and as Teaching Assistant at AIMS. My research interests lie broadly in mathematical biology, applied differential equations, and data analysis in Python.

Research keywords: Applied mathematics; biomathematics; data analysis; Python

Amar S. Wahab

alexall5 — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 14:40:45 +0000

Amar Wahab is Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at �첥��Ƶ. He has taught in the areas of critical sexuality studies, critical studies in masculinity, critical race studies, introductory and advanced sociological theory, and Caribbean cultural studies. His research interests include: sexual citizenship in liberal and postcolonial nation-state formations (mainly related to the Caribbean and Canada),
race and queer transnational politics, critiques of queer liberalism, and race, gender and the politics of representation. His current research project focuses on queer anti-racist critiques of homonationalism in Canada.

Research keywords: Sexuality; gender issues; queer studies; critical race studies; transnational and postcolonial cultural studies