Program Synopsis

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In Fall 2023, I completed my PhD dissertation, From Racial Hauntings to Wondrous Echoes: Towards a Collective Memory of HIV/AIDS Resistance ,  which examined how collective memory can both conceal and resist epistemologies of ignorance within social movement spaces by analyzing the intergenerational impacts of historical whitewashing on HIV/AIDS resistance within Tkaronto. I identify pedagogical, digital, creative, and scholarly methods for cultivating a “collective memory” of HIV/AIDS resistance that can be used to educate younger racialized and Indigenous activists working in fields in or related to HIV/AIDS advocacy better connect to the movement's historical past. 

 

Regarding my knowledge sharing work, I am the founder and Editor-in-Chief of New Sociology: Journal of Critical Praxis, a social justice journal conceived by and for racialized, Indigenous, queer, trans, disabled, and/or woman-identified students, activists, organizers, and creatives; the curator of Erotic Pedagogy, an online resource designed to help PK-12 educators decolonize their sexual education lesson plans, funded by SOGI UBC. Beyond academia, I am the cofounder and now director of The People's Pantry, a food justice mutual aid group formed in response to COVID-19 that feeds families from Tkaronto to the Haldimand Tract, as well as the founder of Paper Roads, a traveling library for families living at and around the southwest border of the GTHA.

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My latest research, Exacerbated Hunger: Addressing Racialized Food Insecurity in the Era of COVID-19, combined my academic and community work to examine the so-called "food crisis" among racialized and Indigenous Ontarians, as well as social movement responses to said "crisis," using digital storytelling and qualitative interviews. The project was funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant from June 2024-May 2026, led by me and my colleague, Naty Tremblay, with support from Nealob Kakar (Graduate Assistants), and guidance from Dr. Carla Rice, Dr. Andrea Paras, and Dr. Nadiya N. Ali (co-investigators), as well as Dr. Elizabeth Jackson (collaborator). The research began as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (September 2023-August 2025) with the Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph, where I now hold adjunct professor status.