Postdoctoral Fellows, Graduate & Undergraduate Research Assistants
Anthony Q. Briggs, Ph.D.
Email: Anthony.briggs.quincy@gmail.com
Affiliation: Oakland University, Rochester Michigan Post Doctoral fellow
Title of Dissertation Research Work: Looking for Work: How Second Generation Caribbean Black Male Youths Make Sense of Social Networks, Social Mobility and Employment Opportunities in Toronto
Description of Role on Project: Project Coordinator/ Research Assistant for the Educational Trajectories of Black Male Youth Project & CIHR Men and Boys Project from 2011 to 2014. I assisted with writing ethics protocol, recruiting participants, interviewing transcribing, coding, writing thematic memo analysis, presenting research findings at conferences nationally and internationally.
Sewsen Igbu
Email: sewsen.igbu@mail.utoronto.ca
Affiliation: PhD student at Adult Education and Community Development, University of Toronto (UofT): Ontario Institute for Studies in Education(OISE)
Title of Research Project: African, Caribbean and Black (ACB) Family Group Conferencing (FGC) Project
Description of Role on the Project: From 2018-2019 I was the Research Assistant (RA) for ACB-FGC project while completing a Master of Education (MEd) in Social Justice Education (SJE) at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). As an RA, I conducted consultations with ACB individuals with lived experience of child welfare, service providers and academics researching child welfare and Black families/children. I co-authored a preliminary research report on review of literature and stakeholder consultations, which was presented to Community Advisory Committee (CAC) and produced into a webinar for the FGC-ACB website. Also, I assisted the legal department at the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children (METRAC) to provide legal, historical, socio-cultural context for ACB families within Ontario for the development of the legal component for the Family Group Conference curriculum. Lastly, I produced a Community Resource manual for ACB Children, Youth and Families within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
Currently, I am co-developing educational materials for Black parents, teachers and social workers about duty to report, navigating child welfare, rights and supports available. The educational materials will be disseminated in numerous forms including community gatherings and webinars. Additionally, this will culminate in the creation of a toolkit for the three above mentioned groups.
David Lewis-Peart
Email: david.davidlewis@gmail.com
Affiliation: None
Title of Research Project: African, Caribbean, Black (ACB) Family Group Conferencing (FGC) Research and Development Project
Description of Role on the Project: Community Engagement and Curriculum Development Consultant and a Project Lead, responsible for outreach to, and relationship building with various stakeholders (project partners, CAS and CCAS, community members), assisting with the establishment of the projects advisory committee, expert working group, and training team, as well as leading the development of the FGC training manual.
David A. Pereira, Ph.D.
Email: david.pereira@utoronto.ca
Affiliation: University of Toronto
Title of Research Project: Educational Trajectories of Young Black Men in Urban Centres
Description of Role on the Project: As a Research Assistant in the Black Men’s Educational Trajectories Project, I was a key collaborator on the research team and supported interview transcription, data analysis and co-authored “Exploring Transitions of Young Black Men Who Have Sex With Men in Canadian Urban Contexts” in Youth as/in Crisis: Young People, Public Policy and the Politics of Learning. David is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Sexuality, Gender and Education in the Faculty of Education at York University for 2020-21
Kourteney King
Email: Kourteney.king@mail.utoronto.ca
Affiliation: University of Toronto
Title of Research Project: Pre-migration experiences of African and Caribbean Black MSM Newcomers to Canada
Description of Role: During my time working as a Research Assistant for Dr. Lance McCready, I completed a systematic literature review on the pre-migration experiences of LGBTQ2 newcomers with a specific focus on African and Caribbean Black Men who have sex with Men.
Rasheeda Forbes-Riley M.Ed in Adult Education and Community Development with a specialization in Comparative International Development Education (CIDE)
Email: r.forbes.riley@mail.utoronto.ca
Affiliation: University of Toronto
Title of Research Project: Black Queer Arts as Archive – The Pedagogical Possibilities and Limitations
Description: My role as research assistant was to support Dr. Lance T. McCready in the 2019 research on the Black Queer archive and knowledge linking of the Transitional Year Program. The project was both an industrious approach to investigate Queer of Color Critique/Analysis coupled with the ingenuity of the Black Queer gaze as it reimagines, creates and produces knowledge. Identifying both Queerness and Blackness as alternative spaces of academic research. We started by centring the marginality of these expressions in both traditional and non-traditional forms of archive.
We researched the traditional approaches to knowledge production that still happen outside of traditional learning spaces as conceptualized in exile by Paulo Freire, Ed Brokenbrough’s Queer of Color Critique, that examined the ontological approach to queer contributions to education, and the historical examples (Legacies in Motion) of how pedagogies and archives that centre the black queer experience in the academic sense, also engages and furthers the field of research with expository and accessible sensibilities in mind.
The Queer Black contemporary artistic expression was also examined as a pedagogically sensual experience whereby the modalities spanned across the globe. We found Blackness and Queerness ontologically performing in photography projects (Isaiah Lopez, Ajamu Ikwe-Tyehimba), visual effects/affects (Lola’s Venus, Kandis Williams), dance and filmmaking (Dance Revolution, Ballroom Ontologies) and theatre (Picasso’s Black Canvass). We acknowledge that these are constructions and bodies of knowledge with pure pedagogical possibilities for learners in both traditional and non-traditional senses, never limited by time or lost in irrelevance as archive.
Sarah Edo
Email: sarah.edo@mail.utoronto.ca
Affiliation: University of Toronto
Title of Research Project: AFFIRM and ADAPT, in collaboration with Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP)
Description of Role on the Project: From 2017 to 2018, I was a Research Assistant (Work Study) for Dr. Lance McCready in the Making Spaces Lab. While my role supported multiple projects Dr. McCready was involved with at the time, my main focus was with the AFFIRM and ADAPT projects with Black CAP. Some of my tasks included: writing reflective and analytic memos, analyzing focus group and interview audio files, creating/revising promotional material, coordinating/organizing guest lectures and talks, attending regular meetings of Making Spaces Lab team.
Tanitia Munroe
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Nadia Qureshi
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Simone DeFacendis
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Precilla Opran
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Jason Tigert
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Montrose Neufeld
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