Sierra Leone Archives | Research & Innovation

Researcher awarded prestigious Banting Fellowship comes to 91��ɫ

muellerm — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Nielson Bezerra, who received his PhD at Universidade Federal de Fluminense in Brazil in 2010 and now teaches at Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, has been awarded a prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue his research program at 91��ɫ’s Harriet Tubman Institute.

The awards were announced by Gary Goodyear, minister of state for science & technology, Thursday, Sept. 13. Bezerra will receive $140,000 in research funding over two years.

Nielson Bezerra

Bezarra’s research project, Liberated African Slaves in Brazil in the Nineteenth Century, examines patterns of forced migration of enslaved Africans to the Americas after the British and North American abolition of the slave trade. The research focuses on the 100,000 enslaved Africans who were destined for Brazil, but were removed from slave ships by the British Royal Navy after 1820 and declared “Liberated Africans”.

The individuals taken off these ships provide a representative sample of the migration to Brazil in this period. They will be studied for the purposes of revealing the broader pattern in determining where people came from in Africa and what happened to them in the Americas. Bezerra has published four books and is a member of the Board of Directors of Museu Vivo do São Bento in Duque de Caxias.

"The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships are Canada's most prestigious awards for postdoctoral researchers," said Goodyear. "These internationally competitive awards allow our country to retain and attract some of the best and brightest researchers in the world, thereby building Canada's economic and competitive edge."

91��ɫ’s Vice-President Research & Innovation, Robert Haché, said, “We are most pleased to have Dr. Nielson Bezarra pursue his research program at 91��ɫ. The Banting Fellowship program leverages an opportunity to attract, retain and recognize exceptional postdoctoral researchers and support them early in their careers.”

As a post-doctoral fellow at 91��ɫ, Bezerra will be supervised by Professor Paul Lovejoy, Distinguished Research Professor, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History and director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples. Bezerra joins a research team that is digitizing and analyzing documentation on Liberated Africans in Sierra Leone, Angola, Cuba, and elsewhere, besides Brazil.

The purpose of the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships is to build world-class research capacity by recruiting top-tier Canadian and international postdoctoral researchers at an internationally competitive level of funding. Seventy fellowships are awarded yearly through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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PhD student in the Tubman Institute selected as Nahum Goldmann Fellow

fmaquito — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Winnipeg born and raised , a PhD candidate in history at the at 91��ɫ, was selected as a fellow for the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship that will take place in Israel from June 12 to June 20, wrote the :

She was recommended by Ruth Klein, national director of B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights and executive director of the National Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (NTF), and Adam Fuerstenberg, Professor Emeritus at Ryerson University and former director of the Holocaust Centre of Toronto. Fuerstenberg is assisting Sapoznik with a book project, Holocaust by Bullets, which looks at the mass murder of Jews in Berezne during World War II. Sapoznik has been invited to make a presentation about her research to a coming meeting of the NTF in Toronto later this year.

“I’m incredibly humbled and honoured and I look forward to the opportunity,” said Sapoznik, who had just returned from an international conference in Sierra Leone, Africa, on forced marriage in conflict situations.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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SSHRC-funded international workshop examines forced marriages in conflict stituations

fmaquito — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

91��ɫ law & society Professor (LLB '88) and The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples are hosting an international workshop on forced marriage in conflict situations today and tomorrow in Room 305 91��ɫ Lanes on the Keele campus.

Left: Annie Bunting

Bringing together historians of slavery and women's human rights scholars, this workshop will explore the phenomenon of forced marriage and enslavement from comparative and historical perspectives.

During conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda and Rwanda, women were kidnapped, raped and forced into "marriages" with combatants. recently found such gender violations to constitute a new crime against humanity of forced marriage as opposed to sexual slavery.

Workshop speakers will explore the merits of prosecuting those responsible for forced marriage under the heading of Sexual Slavery, Forced Marriage or Enslavement? They will also explore the historical antecedents of servile marriage and enslavement of women.

A keynote presenter at the workshop is , chair of the Women's Forum in Sierra Leone, a national umbrella organization of women's groups in the region. M'Carthy has been working with the for the past three years and will speak about the experiences of female victims in the Sierra Leone war. Other presenters will discuss comparable practices in Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC.

Speaking at the workshop are:

, president of Free the Slaves
Gaëlle Breton-LeGoff, a lecturer at the University of Quebec in Montreal
91��ɫ law & society Professor
, a senior researcher in children, armed conflict and human rights at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University
91��ɫ Distinguished Research Professor Paul Lovejoy, director of The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples and
Rosaline M’Carthy, President, Women's Forum of Sierra Leone
, Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA), Harvard Law School
Osgoode Hall Law School Professor
University of Hull Professor Joel Quirk,
, RCUK Fellow in International Slavery at the University of Liverpool
, 91��ɫ PhD candidate in history, The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples
Jody Sarich, DePaul University, Free the Slaves

This workshop is the first of two conferences supported by a grant. In February 2011, Bunting will host a larger international conference in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Today's workshop is supported by numerous areas at 91��ɫ, including the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime & Security, the Office of the Provost, the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, the dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), and The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples.

For more information, visit The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples website or contact Kathy Mirzaei, interim graduate program assistant, Department of Sociology, LA&PS.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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