The Black Studies podcast, hosted by John Drabinksi, engages with activists and scholars in the field of Black Studies. In the March 9 episode, Bianca Beauchemin, an assistant professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies, discusses Black Studies in a Canadian context, the role of gender and sexuality within the field, what drew her to work and more.

Beauchemin’s research explores how embodiment, labour, sensuousness, spirituality, marronage, resistance and alternative sexualities and genders re-imagine concepts of freedom and Black liberation. She recently was the 2022-23 recipient of the postdoctoral fellowship in Black Feminist Thought at Queen’s University and previously held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) doctoral fellowship while completing her PhD in gender studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). 

.

In 2019, Quebec introduced Bill 21, a secularism law that prohibits public-sector employees from wearing religious symbols or attire at work. The provincial government is now hoping to expand the legislation to include more rules and workplaces. 

Nadia Hasan, a professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies, says that Muslim women are more impacted by Bill 21 since they make up the largest minority group in the province. Hasan interviewed over 400 Muslim women living in Quebec about the law’s impact. Seventy-three per cent said Bill 21 affected their ability to look for a job, with a similar percentage saying they have considered leaving the province. She worries that the expansion of the legislation will further harm Muslim women and other visible minority communities.

Hasan’s writing on Islamophobia and related issues has appeared in CBC, CTV, Globe and Mail and other media outlets. Her research interests include race and racism, gender issues, Islamophobia, diaspora studies and South Asia.

Read the full article in .

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) has announced the recipients of the November 2025 SSHRC Connection Grants. Ten 91��ɫ research projects received funding.

Congratulations to the researchers from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) whose innovative projects were selected. These projects span a wide range of disciplines and demonstrate the depth and diversity of research expertise within our Faculty.

The one-year Connection Grant funding will support key knowledge-mobilization activities including events, workshops and outreach initiatives that help strengthen the impact and reach of this important work.

Projects involving LA&PS researchers are listed below.

Converging and Conflicting Buddhist Legal Frames: Secular Governances and Buddhist Transgressions, led by Alicia Turner (associate professor, Department of Humanities, LA&PS) with co-applicant Benjamin Berger (professor, Osgoode Hall Law School), received $24,619.

The Relational Turn: Looking Back, Thinking Ahead, led by Ruth Buchanan��(professor, Osgoode Hall Law School) and co-led by��Annie Bunting��(professor, Department of Social Science, LA&PS) and the University of Toronto, received $20,096

Waste-work: race, caste, and labour in the new global politics of disposability, led by Shubhra Gururani (associate professor, Department of Anthropology, LA&PS), received $23,503.

Monstrous Intimacies at 15, led by Tiana Reid (assistant professor, Department of English, LA&PS), received $24,055.

Colère et Espoir autour de la Palestine : Perspectives d'artistes et de chercheur.es en sciences sociales, co-led by Nadia Hasan (assistant professor, School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies, LA&PS) with partners from Université Laval and Université du Québec à Montréal, received $24,997.

Respite, Care, and Ethics for Cultural Workers: A Traveling Symposium, led by OCAD University and co-led by��Casey Mecija��(associate professor, Department of Communication & Media Studies), received $49,996.

De l'économie politique postcapitaliste à l'utopie — Rencontre entre recherche en sciences sociales et pratiques artistiques, led by Saint Paul University and co-led by��Audrey Laurin-Lamothe��(associate professor, Department of Social Science, LA&PS) and partners from Lund University, Université Laval, and Université du Québec en Outaouais, received $23,646.

Lusophone Studies Association Meeting, “Voices and Visions: Lusophone Communities in the Global Landscape,” led by the University of British Columbia and co-led by Robert Kenedy (associate professor, Department of Sociology, LA&PS), received $24,375.

��ó: Tewatia'tarò:rok Taetewatia'takéhnha', led by the University of Toronto and co-led by Jeremy Green (assistant professor, Department of Humanities, LA&PS), received $50,000.

Read the full story in YFile.

Andrea O’Reilly, a 91��ɫ professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies, was quoted in a Toronto Star article discussing nursing rooms at the Eaton Centre shopping mall. The article reports that two fathers were asked by mall security to leave a nursing room claiming it was for mothers only, prompting disagreement and leading one family to file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

O’Reilly says that since the mall only has a single nursing room available, it should offer more space and a private area so that both families and individual mothers can use the space. O’Reilly says it’s important to remember that families care for children, not only women, so ideally there should be several nursing rooms to meet the needs of different families.

O’Reilly is internationally recognized as the founder of Motherhood Studies. In addition to being a 91��ɫ professor, she is founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement and publisher of Demeter Press. She is the editor or co-editor of over 30 books exploring a variety of topics related to motherhood.

Read the full article in the .

Suliana Beraki, who is completing a minor in Gender & Women’s Studies (GWST), recently published a blog post in The Trauma & Mental Health Report. Her piece examines the barriers faced by Black and Indigenous people of colour (BIPOC) within Canada’s health care system. The article also features insights from Assistant Professor Bianca Beauchemin.

Beraki discusses how BIPOC communities are often over-policed, made invisible and given less support from public services. Many individuals in these communities don’t trust the healthcare system due to a long history of unethical and unfair treatment. They also face systemic racism and longer wait times for care, which leads to chronic stress, trauma and poor health. 

.

On Monday, Nov. 3, individuals and teams were recognized for their contributions to the 91��ɫ Community at the President’s Staff Recognition Awards. The annual awards celebrate meaningful contributions across the institution in several key areas, including community building, leadership and service excellence.

The following staff members from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies were celebrated as winners and nominees:

Decolonization, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (DEDI) Award

Nominated:

• Colleen Robinson, administrative coordinator, Department of Anthropology 

Gary Brewer Emerging Leader Award

Nominated:

• Bhanu Priya Sharma, student engagement coordinator, LA&PS Colleges
• Tanzina Tahereen, associate director, faculty curriculum, Office of the Associate Dean, Programs (LA&PS) 

Harriet Lewis Team Award for Service Excellence

Nominated:

• English Department Administrative Staff 
• LA&PS Faculty Research Office  

The President’s Leadership Award

Nominated:

• Amanda Rodrigues, director, strategic enrolment, LA&PS��

Ronald Kent Medal

Winner: 

• Magy Baket,��student success and academic advisor, LA&PS��

Nominated:

• Celeta Irvin, undergraduate program administrator, School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies, LA&PS

President’s Voice of 91��ɫ Award

Nominated:

• Jacqueline Selman,��undergraduate students coordinator, Department of Social Science, LA&PS

Congratulations to all the staff recognized in the awards.

Read the full story in YFile.

Nadia Hasan, assistant professor at the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies has��co-written an article in The Conversation, discussing the recently released Islamophobia Research Hub report,��Documenting the “Palestine Exception”: An Overview of Trends in Islamophobia, Anti-Palestinian and Anti-Arab Racism in Canada in the Aftermath of October 7, 2023. In the article the authors discuss the increase in racism towards Arab and Palestinian people in Canada following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the way this discrimination is affecting those who are vocal about Palestinian rights.

Hasan’s writing on issues related to Islamophobia and has appeared on CBC, CTV, The Globe and Mail and other outlets. Her research interests include race and racism, gender issues, Islamophobia, diaspora and South Asia.

Read the full article in .

Hazal Halavut is a postdoctoral fellow for the 2025-26 year, working under the supervision of Alison Crosby, professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies.

Halavut’s work traces the afterlives of colonial violence and genocide across memory, history and culture, attending to how they are held, denied and reimagined within the psychic, political and aesthetic life of the collective. Her postdoctoral project at 91��ɫ, Georgetown Boys: An Archive of Genocide, Collective Memory, and Canada’s “Noble Experiment”, turns to an extraordinary archive of survival and imagination: Ararat (1926–30), a journal produced by Armenian orphans brought to Georgetown, Ontario under Canada’s assimilationist experiment after surviving the Armenian Genocide. One of the earliest diasporic Armenian archives in Canada and among the very few child-authored genocide archives worldwide, Ararat is a site where boyhood was staged as masculinity, performed by the boys in ways that both reflected and responded to Canada’s demand that they become workers, men and proof of a successful experiment in nation-building. The project investigates how survival, memory and gendered belonging were forged under this assimilationist regime and how fiction, bilingualism and adaptation worked as strategies of refusal and creative survival within the demands of Canadianization.

This research builds on her doctoral dissertation, Archives of Absence: Nation’s Sleep, Perpetrator’s Dream, and Afterlives of Genocide (University of Toronto), now being developed into a book, which argues that absence functions as a generative force in the perpetrator’s national imaginary, a “technology of wakefulness” that organizes law, historiography and aesthetics in Turkey. Moving from the archive of absence in Turkey to the archive of creative survival produced by the Georgetown Boys in Canada, Halavut’s work rethinks trauma in a psychic and political economy shaped by the complicities of states, the demands of labor and the disciplining of gender and unsettled through imagination.

As part of her work in the Islamophobia Research Hub at 91��ɫ, School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies assistant professor Nadia Hasan has published a report about the increase in anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism in Canada. The report makes a total of 15 recommendations including actions that could be taken to prevent Islamophobia across government, media and educational institutions. The full report can be accessed online.

The report discusses how governments across the country must increase educational programs about the history of Palestine and the Nakba to help prevent hate crimes and racism. It recommends advisory tables within post-secondary institutions where students and faculty can discuss issues and work together to prevent discrimination. The report also recommends third-party reviews about how discrimination and protests at post-secondary institutions are handled.

Nadia Hasan is an assistant professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies. Her writing on issues related to Islamophobia and has appeared on��CBC,��CTV,��The Globe and Mail��and other outlets. Her research interests include race and racism, gender issues, Islamophobia, diaspora and South Asia.

.

Alison Crosby, associate professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies, and Heather Evans, doctoral scholar in the graduate program in Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies, have co-edited a new book entitled, Memorializing Violence: Transnational Feminist Reflections. The book is a collection of feminist and queer reflections on the ways societies memorialize loss in the wake of different forms of violence, including imperial, military and state violence. The book’s contributors look at memorials, archives, art installations, performances and other ways that communities memorialize, and looks at how grief can serve as a catalyst for activism and societal change.

Crosby holds a PhD from 91��ɫ. She has focused much of her research on the memorialization of harm from political violence in Guatemala, where she has worked for over 30 years. Her other research interests include gender issues, Latin American and Caribbean studies, transitional justice, and feminist participatory action research.

Learn more about the book or order it on��.