Graduate Research Assistant | The Harriet Tubman Institute

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

Carlito Oliveira Junior

rebsl — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:54:48 +0000

Carlito Lopes de Oliveira Junior is a PhD candidate in History at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) and holds a Master's degree in History from the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), where he was advised by Prof. Dr. Luiz Fernando Saraiva. His doctoral research, supervised by Prof. Dr. Anita Correia Lima de Almeida (UNIRIO), investigates the internal slave market in the Recôncavo da Guanabara (Estrela, Iguaçu, and Magé, 1850–1888), using fiscal records, parish registers, and historical cartography. He also holds a Master's degree in History from UFF, with a dissertation on the spatial, economic, and political formation of Vila de Estrela (1846–1892). He is Director of Historical-Cultural Heritage Preservation at the Prefeitura Municipal de Magé (Rio de Janeiro) and founder of the cultural platform @historiademage. He is a member of the YSI/INET Economic History Working Group and a TEDx Countdown 2024 speaker.

Keywords: Internal slave trade, Atlantic slavery, second slavery, Recôncavo da Guanabara, nineteenth-century Brazil, historical demography, African diaspora, economic history, Atlantic capitalism, slavery, abolition

Esther Feza Borauzima

rebsl — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:31:32 +0000

Borauzima Feza Esther is a Congolese researcher and lecturer, holding a Master’s degree in Political science from the Université Officielle de Bukavu and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from the Université Catholique de Louvain. She is currently pursuing a doctoral program at the University of Mons within the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

Her doctoral research examines the relationship between armed dynamics in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the environment, through an anthropological reading of gender. Her research is based on four empirical configurations operating in and around the Virunga National Park, located in eastern DRC: (1) Women fighters in armed groups, (2) Former female combatants incarcerated for espionage, (3) Female rangers of Virunga National Park, and (4) Female forest resource traders. She investigates how the agency of these women unfolds differently across temporal and spatial contexts.

Keywords: Armed conflicts, women, agency, environment, afrofeminism, decolonial, DRC

Zainab Osman Mahgoub Gaafar

rebsl — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:16:03 +0000

Zainab Gaafar is an architect and project manager specialising in research and design. She is the founder of Studio Urban, a Khartoum-based research studio that explores urban studies at the intersection of culture and knowledge accessibility. The studio produces multimedia content and integrates community engagement tools into its research methodologies. In recent years, Zainab has shifted her focus toward heritage projects, namely serving as curator and exhibition designer for Safeguarding Sudan's Living Heritage (2023–2025), and leads the development of the SSLH museum. Her work investigates critical questions around the role of heritage during times of conflict and the importance of preserving heritage beyond institutional frameworks.

Keywords: Intangible Heritage, Urban space, Conflict and War

Dee Marksman-Phillpotts

rebsl — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:35:41 +0000

Dee Markman-Phillpotts (they/them) is a Black, trans, non-binary educator, researcher, and community advocate whose work centers Black trans life, collective care, and liberatory futures. A PhD student with a background in social work and sexuality studies, their research examines how intersecting systems of anti-Black racism, gender-based violence, queer and transphobia, and poverty shape the lived realities of Black and marginalized communities.
Grounded in Black feminist methodologies and abolitionist praxis, Dee’s scholarship interrogates dominant discourses that render Black trans people hypervisible as sites of harm yet invisible in policy, care infrastructures, and knowledge production. They are particularly interested in how communities cultivate survival strategies, mutual aid networks, and embodied practices of care that challenge carceral logics and reimagine safety beyond the state.
Through teaching, community-engaged research, and public scholarship, Dee works to bridge academic and grassroots spaces, insisting that knowledge is most transformative when it is accountable to the communities from which it emerges.

Keywords: Black Trans Studies; Queer of Colour Critique: Black Feminist Thought; Intersectionality; Anti-Black Racism; Gender-Based Violence; Abolitionist Frameworks; Transformative Justice; Collective Care; Critical Pedagogy; Anti-Oppressive Education

Sheba Abena Wiafe

rebsl — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:57:47 +0000

Sheba Abena Wiafe is currently completing her PhD at 91��ɫ in the Social and Political Thought Program. Her research focuses on investigating the migratory movements of African women to Europe against the histories of the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic slave trade through Black critical theoretical and psychoanalytic approaches. Her written work is forthcoming with The Black Lexicon edited volume, and she is currently guest editing a special issue of SAQ focusing on the intellectual interventions of Christina Sharpe’s first monograph Monstrous Intimacies.

Keywords: Black Critical Theory, Migration, Slavery, Psychonanalysis, Continental Africa

Britney Andrews

rebsl — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:46:17 +0000

Britney Andrews is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Social Science at 91��ɫ. Her research examines gendered and racialized experiences of state-sanctioned and interpersonal violence, with attention to the ways these experiences are complicated through various vectors of power and privilege. She is currently focusing on police violence, carcerality and approaches to addressing harm which move beyond traditional, institutional responses.

Taylar Carty

rebsl — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:59:39 +0000

Taylar Carty is a history PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow. Her research explores the lives and experiences of enslaved and apprenticed Black girls in Barbados from 1750-1838. She is passionate about education and museums and has worked as a consultant and curator at various heritage sites in the UK.

Norman Smith

rebsl — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:57:39 +0000

Norman Smith is a Master’s student in the Graduate Education Program. His current project through the lens, is a cultural critique on the subtleties of racism that exist within Canadian culture, that utilizes photographic elements to bring to the forefront the hidden truth of the social norms we hide behind. His goal for his research is to be able to combine academia, with his artistic capabilities in order to leave the world with images and words that could be impactful to our present and future interactions with one another.

Keywords: Black male studies, Anti-black Racism