Members | The Harriet Tubman Institute

Cyrus Sundar Singh

rebsl — Mon, 04 May 2026 18:34:06 +0000

dr. Cyrus is a multidisciplinary scholar/researcher, filmmaker, musician, author, poet, and changemaker. From arriving as a fresh-off-the-boat 10 year-old from India, to a professional musician touring across North America, to a documentary filmmaker, to a migration scholar and assistant professor, Cyrus has consistently curated stories and scholarship promoting social justice, equity, and engagement in amplifying diverse voices. From the National Film Board of Canada’s Gemini Award-winning documentary debut Film Club (2001) to the genre-bending nascent live-documentary world premieres: Brothers In The Kitchen (2016) and Africville in Black and White (2017/18), Cyrus’ outputs of scholarly research, publications, and creative productions have taken him around the world including the Faroe Islands, Haiti, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Portugal, India, Jamaica, and South Africa.

Since 2020, as a Research Fellow with CERC in Migration at Toronto Metropolitan University, Cyrus mentored over 54 Indigenous and non-Indigenous graduate students across three nationwide multimedia cohorts. From coast to coast, these participants individually and collectively unpacked senses of identity and belonging across this land we call Canada, and produced compelling narrative-driven creative works. This new scholarship and its accompanying educational learning resources will greatly assist the next generation of students. From music to verse, lectures to performances, the collected wisdom that Cyrus shares in the classroom reflects the journey of successes, failures, and the scars earned.

Keywords: Migration, Refuge, Creative, Story, Documentary, Narrative, Multimedia

Ruthneldha Attilus

rebsl — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:37:12 +0000

I am an undergraduate student in Political Science at 91��ɫ with research interests in international law, corporate governance, and global political economy. My work examines how legal and economic systems shape global inequalities, with a particular focus on the structural conditions that contribute to the underdevelopment of the Global South.

Deborah Neill

rebsl — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:33:37 +0000

I am an Associate Professor of Modern European History at 91��ɫ in Toronto. I focus on the history of European imperialism in Africa, the history of the two World Wars, and the history of colonial medicine. My first book, Networks in Tropical Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical Specialty, was published by Stanford University Press in 2012.

I have two current projects: my manuscript-in-progress explores the expansion of the commodities and retail firm John Holt & Co (Liverpool) in non-British colonies (French Equatorial Africa, Spanish Equatorial Guinea, and German Kamerun) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I am interested in the relationship of the company to foreign governments, the expansion of their regional trade in the Gulf of Guinea, and the experiences of their European and African employees.

My second project explores aspects of the First World War in Cameroun. I have articles in progress on African telegraphers, guides, and spies who assisted the British; the experiences of John Holt & Co. agents and traders during the war; and the way that John Holt & Co.'s business was impacted by the war and the aftermath, when the territory became a Mandate under the League of Nations, controlled by the British and French governments.

My teaching interests are broadly focused on the history of modern Europe and Imperialism since 1789 and includes colonialism, World Wars One and Two, the Holocaust, Modern Germany, Modern France, War, Revolution and Society in the 20th century, and Globalization.

Keywords: Colonial Capitalism, John Holt & Co. , Transnational Business, Rubber, Palm Oil, Western Africa

Nia Akilah Wilson

rebsl — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:22:35 +0000

Nia Akilah Wilson (she/her) is a doctoral student in the Department of Humanities at 91��ɫ. She is a research associate with the YRC II in Black Sonic Cultures. Nia earned her MA in Human Geography from University of Toronto. Her SSHRC CGS-M funded thesis focused on the experiences of Black women with anti-black surveillance practices, especially in the wake of Toronto’s Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy. Her current research explores the implications of counterinsurgent surveillance policies on Toronto’s Caribana and London’s Notting Hill Carnival, with a focus on Black youth.

Keywords: Carnival, diaspora, Black youth, surveillance, counterinsurgency, resistance

Tareq Al Khalaf

rebsl — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:18:31 +0000

Tareq is a PhD student in Health at 91��ɫ under supervision of Prof. Farah Ahmad. His research examines the lived experiences of family caregivers of racialized autistic children in Canada. Tareq’s work focuses on how collaborative community-centred approaches, particularly those aligned with Social Prescribing (SRx) models, can enhance caregivers’ health and well-being through equitable partnerships between healthcare providers and community organizations. His study aims to facilitate knowledge translation that informs and strengthens systems of care in Canada, with broader applicability in glocal context. His research interests also include social prescribing, autism, caregivers’ health, interprofessional collaboration, primary health care, and healthcare quality improvement.

Keywords: global health, interprofessional collaboration, health systems, autism

Magdaline Nkando

rebsl — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:16:00 +0000

Dr. Magdaline Nkando is the Founder and Lead of Kujua Collective, an African-led platform advancing knowledge systems transformation and Learning Justice. Her work focuses on how knowledge is produced, governed, and applied within institutions, and how this shapes development outcomes. She is developing Learning Justice as an emerging governance methodology, alongside the Learning Justice Framework and Index, to support institutional transformation. Her work spans research, policy advisory, and institutional capacity building across multilateral and African contexts, with a focus on advancing African knowledge systems within global discourse.

Keywords: Learning Justice, Knowledge Systems Transformation, African and Diaspora Knowledge Governance, Institutional Learning, Epistemic Justice, Knowledge-to-Policy Translation Systems, Global South Knowledge Systems

Ayomide Yemi

rebsl — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:07:38 +0000

Ayomide Yemi is a researcher and development practitioner working at the intersection of women’s economic empowerment, financial inclusion, and behavioral finance in low-income contexts. She is the Founder of Renbi Women Empowerment Initiative, a Nigeria-based organization focused on strengthening the sustainability of economic empowerment outcomes for last-mile women through community-based financial literacy and behavior change models.

Her work is grounded in extensive field experience with women in informal economies, where she has designed and implemented financial literacy and savings-focused interventions tailored to low-literacy and underserved communities. Through this work, she has developed the HER-Inclusion Model, a behavioral readiness framework that examines the gap between access to financial services and sustained financial participation among low-income women.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law and a Master’s degree in Management with a specialization in Finance and Investment from IE Business School.

Keywords: Women’s Economic Empowerment, Financial Inclusion, Behavioral Finance, Financial Literacy, Informal Economies, Social Impact, Community-Based Finance

Praveen Naik Bellampali

rebsl — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:01:19 +0000

Dr. Praveen Naik Bellampalli is an Assistant Professor at PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore. He is a rural development scholar with expertise in Rural Studies, Tribal Studies, Migration, Livelihoods, and Rural Entrepreneurship. He holds a PhD in Rural Development from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), focusing on migration, agrarian distress, and livelihood vulnerabilities in drought-prone regions of India. He is a recipient of the National Fellowship for Higher Education (Government of India) and a Gold Medalist at the MPhil level.

He has an interdisciplinary academic background with MPhil degrees from TISS and Gandhigram Rural Institute, and an MSW from the Central University of Karnataka. He has qualified UGC-NET and KSET in Social Work and has over three years of teaching, research, and field experience, including his tenure at the Central University of Karnataka.

Dr. Bellampalli has published in reputed Scopus and Web of Science-indexed journals and presented at international conferences in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines, supported by an ICSSR Travel Grant. He is currently the Principal Investigator of a funded project on social security and livelihoods of rural women in Coimbatore and actively contributes to research, teaching, and policy-oriented work.

Christiane Ndedi Essombe

rebsl — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:58:39 +0000

Dr. Christiane Ndedi Essombe (she/her) holds a Master's of public health from the University of Montreal School of Public Health and a PhD degree in psychology from the University of Cape Town. She has researched structural inequities for over ten years in several countries that include Tanzania, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Canada. Her current research focuses on the psychological dynamics of western colonial violence and their impacts on the way Black Africans - on the continent and in the diaspora - perceive themselves and others.

Keywords: (De)coloniality, western colonialism, appropriated whiteness, critical race theory, colonial identity erosion

Muna-Udbi Ali

rebsl — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:27:39 +0000

Dr. Muna-Udbi A. Ali (she/they) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment and Urban Change (EUC), specializing in Black Studies in Geography and Environment, at 91��ɫ in Toronto, Canada. Before joining the faculty of EUC, Ali worked as an Assistant Professor at California State University San Marcos, and as a Visiting Faculty member at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, her primary research covers diverse theoretical foci including Black studies, critical refugee and migration studies, critical race studies, Black feminist studies, Black geographies, transnational feminism, environmental justice, popular education, critical Muslim studies, public policy, critical pedagogy, and higher education studies. She has published several book chapters and scholarly articles in journals including The Black Scholar, Darkmatter, Reconsidering Development, and The Conversation, among others. Outside of academia, Ali is a community worker, curriculum and policy consultant, researcher, and anti-oppression educator. She has designed curricula and policies on gender-based violence, Afrocentric education, and anti-racist praxis. She has worked in education and curriculum development in Canada, United States, Kenya, and Somalia.

Keywords: Black Studies, Black geographies, Black feminist theories and methods, critical refugee studies, higher education studies, critical pedagogy, popular education, environmental justice, public policy, and surveillance studies.