sociology | The Harriet Tubman Institute

Yayo Vuni

rebsl — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 17:22:29 +0000

I completed my bachelor’s degree at Acadia University where I graduated with honours, double majoring in Sociology and Political Science. My honours thesis focused on the ‘’Impact of South Sudanese Cultural Marriage Practices on Women's Pursuit of Post-Secondary Education in Canada.” My research interest includes social justice in education and the contribution of African women to the field of development in Africa.

Lorne Foster

rebsl — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 22:38:07 +0000

Lorne Foster is Professor, School of Public Policy & Administration (SPPA). He holds the York Research Chair in Black Canadian Studies & Human Rights (Tier 1). As the Director of the Institute for Social Research (ISR), Dr. Foster oversees the leading university-based survey research centre in Canada. He is past Academic Director, of the York Statistics Canada Research Data Centre (RDC); and the inaugural Chair, Race Inclusion and Supportive Environments (RISE). In his university service, he currently serves as the Chair of the Community Safety �첥��Ƶ Council (CSC); and is a member of the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Rights (PACHR). Dr. Foster is also the Director of the Diversity & Human Rights Certificate (DHRC), which he established in partnership with the Human Resources Professional Association (HRPA). This initiative is the first academic-industry partnership sponsored by a regulatory organization.

Annie Bunting

rebsl — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 21:53:19 +0000

Dr. Annie Bunting is a Professor of Law & Society at �첥��Ƶ and York Research Chair in International Gender Justice & Peacebuilding. Her research expertise includes socio-legal studies of marriage and childhoods, feminist international law, and culture, religion and law. Since 2010, she has directed an international research collaboration (SSHRC-funded Partnership) called Conjugal Slavery in War: Partnership for the study of enslavement, marriage and masculinities with historians of slavery, community-based researchers and women’s human rights scholars. This project includes partners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Uganda, Canada and England.

She is the co-editor of Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa (Ohio University Press 2016) with Benjamin Lawrance and Richard Roberts; Contemporary Slavery: Popular Rhetoric and Political Practice (University of British Columbia Press 2017, Cornell University Press 2018) with Joel Quirk; and Research as More than Extraction? Knowledge Production and Sexual Violence in Post Conflict African Societies (openDemocracy/ Beyond Trafficking and Slavery, eBook 2020) with Allen Kiconco and Joel Quirk.

Keywords: International gender justice; contemporary slavery; conflict-related SGBV

Sylvia Bawa

rebsl — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 21:50:57 +0000

Dr Sylvia Bawa is a global sociologist and tenured Associate Professor of Sociology at �첥��Ƶ in Canada with expertise in human rights, development, gender and globalization. With immense experience working with international and local organizations and groups on development, social justice and human rights issues, her expertise in these areas have been recognized through numerous research awards. With over 15 years of experience in conducting exceptional qualitative research on the aforementioned areas, she has led and currently co-leads international collaborative research projects on human rights, truth and reconciliation and gender and development. Her publications appear in high impact journals such as Third World Quarterly, African Identities, Qualitative Research Report, Development in Practice, Canadian Journal of African Studies as well chapters in the International Human Rights of Women

(Part of the International Human Rights Series) and The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies (Springer Major Reference Works Series).

Sharon Henry

rebsl — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 21:27:32 +0000

Sharon Henry is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at �첥��Ƶ.
Sharon is a long-standing graduate member of Race Inclusion and Supportive Environments (RISE); an executive graduate caucus member of the Harriet Tubman Institute (HTI); a graduate representative at Center for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC); a graduate representative on the Equity Diversity and Inclusion Council, (EDI); and a graduate representative on the Faculty of Graduate Studies Council (FGS).

Beauty Umana

alexall5 — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 01:58:35 +0000

Beauty is an interdisciplinary scholar in sociolinguistics and health policy and equity passionate about mobility and social justice. Her sociolinguistic work has allowed her conduct research on language, migration, and social change. Her work focuses on Nigerian immigrants in Cape Town, drawing on their everyday lived experiences as immigrants to examine their social positioning as insiders and outsiders in their new society. Beauty’s primary research interest in health discipline is how stigma can interfere with disease treatment specifically in black communities in low income countries. Her broader research interests include language policy, women's health, TB stigma and other disease-related stigma.

She holds an adjunct lecturing position in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she lectures at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Previously, she also worked as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Dental Sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, South Africa, teaching advanced academic competencies at the undergraduate level.

Beauty’s current project focuses on TB stigma in in black communities of South Africa. This project will illuminate how language commonly associated with TB prevention and treatment may be a vehicle for its implicit stigmatization. The study employs critical discourse analysis methodology to examine policy documents and clinical guidelines for TB testing and management. Informed by an interpretive paradigm, the primary aim of the study is to reveal how language is utilized to manufacture social and normative experiences, feelings, and public health responses to TB.

Omosalewa O. Olawoye

rebsl — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 05:32:48 +0000

Salewa is an Associate Professor in the Business and Society Program of the Department of Social Science at �첥��Ƶ. She is the current Director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and Its Diasporas at �첥��Ƶ, Canada. She has a PhD in Economics and Social Science Consortium (University of Missouri – Kansas City, 2016). Her research focuses on heterodox approaches to sustainable economic development through natural resources, and monetary theory. She takes a bottom-up approach towards money from the individual level to the central bank. Her interdisciplinary research work mainly focuses on these issues in the Sub-Saharan African region. She co-edited the book, Monetary Policy and Central Banking: New Directions in Post-Keynesian Theory (2012) and has an edited book, COVID-19 and the Response of Central Banks: Coping with Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa (2023).

Ola Mohammed

rebsl — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 19:29:22 +0000

Ola Mohammed is an Assistant Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Humanities Department at �첥��Ƶ. Her research is in the areas of Black Studies, Black Popular Music, Sound Studies and Diaspora Studies. She specializes in interdisciplinary research exploring Black cultural production, Black social life and Black being as sites of possibility.

Nathanael Ojong

rebsl — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 07:15:07 +0000

Dr. Ojong is Assistant Professor of International Development Studies. He is Associate Editor of the journal Sustainable Development, Associate Editor of Energy Exploration & Exploitation, and is a member of the Knowledge Network of African Experts established by the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa to help shape economic and social policy in Africa.

His work encompasses renewable energy technologies and electricity capitalism, energy and sustainability, urban and rural livelihoods, financial inclusion, entrepreneurship, informal economies, social determinants of health, and social protection in sub-Saharan Africa.

His work has appeared in journals such as Nature Energy, Energy Research & Social Science, Environmental Research Letters, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Rural Studies, and Journal of Business Research.

Agnès Berthelot-Raffard

rebsl — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 16:22:37 +0000

Dr. Agnès Berthelot-Raffard is an Assistant Professor in the Critical Disability Studies graduate program in the School of Health Policy and Management at �첥��Ƶ.
Her works focus on Black Health Studies/Black Disability Studies. She analyses the impact of racism and racialization on all dimensions of health and well-being. She also tries to examine the consequences of epistemic injustices in the healthcare system for those who are on the margins. Dr. Berthelot-Raffard is currently leading a Pan-Canadian project on the socio-determinants of Black Students’ Mental Health (funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada). As principal investigator, she is also working on Black women’s reproductive health (with Relais Femmes, a feminist community partner in Quebec).
In her PhD, she analyses the ethical and political stakes on the recognition of caregiving. As a political philosopher, she published several papers about the rights of caregivers, and the ethical aspects of caring for an elderly or someone living with a disability, a chronic illness or a cognitive impairment. She also published feminist philosophy papers on Black feminist epistemology, and about the care workers’ rights in a transnational perspective.
Before joining York, she worked as an advisor in the ethics of research board (Direction de santé publique de Montréal). She taught bioethics, medical ethics, and ethics of public health. She was also an Assistant Professor of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa. Knew as an expert of Black feminism, Dr. Berthelot-Raffard created the first accredited university course in the francophone world devoted entirely to this political thought (UQAM, Montreal, Quebec).