About Me.

My name is Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa (they/she) and I'm a scholar, community organizer, creative writer, and educator across Central Southern Ontario. I was recently hired as a Assistant Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Program in the Political Studies Department at the University of Saskatchewan. Before this, I was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow and sessional instructor at the University of Guelph, in affiliation with Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice and the departments of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition and sociology. My research, organizing, art, and teaching all converge on topics of social justice; antiracism, decolonization, and intersectionality; qualitative and digital methods;  critical and engaged pedagogy; and critical social theory. 

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My PhD dissertation, From Racial Hauntings to Wondrous Echoes: Towards a Collective Memory of HIV/AIDS Resistance, 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 Toronto, ON. 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 (locally and globally). 

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Organizing wise, 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, Additionally, I am 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 Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area.

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My postdoctoral research, Exacerbated Hunger: Addressing Racialized Food Insecurity in the Era of COVID-19, combined my academic and community work to examine the current food crisis among racialized and Indigenous Ontarians, as well as social movement responses to these impacts, using digital storytelling methods and qualitative interviews. The project was funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant in June 2024 and will be completed by Fall 2026 with the support of Dr. Carla Rice, Dr. Andrea Paras, and Dr. Nadiya N. Ali (co-investigators), as well as Dr. Elizabeth Jackson (collaborator). The research is hosted by the University of Guelph, for which I hold adjunct professor status.