U of T appoints OISE's Njoki Wane Special Advisor on Status of Women Issues
June 2, 2011
By Jennifer Sipos-Smith
"I am very pleased to announce that Professor Njoki Wane will assume the role of Special Advisor on Status of Women Issues effective September 1, 2011 for a three year term," announced Angela Hildyard, vice-president Human Resources and Equity, University of Toronto yesterday.
As Special Advisor on Status of Women Issues, Professor Wane will focus primarily upon research and policy development concerning the intersectionality of gender with race, disability, sexual orientation and aboriginal status as these impact the lived experiences of women faculty, staff and students at the University of Toronto.
Njoki Wane is a professor in the department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education and the director of the Office of Teaching Support at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.
Njoki's research interests lie in the intersectionality of gender with race and class; she has also engaged in work on indigenous knowledge practices, teacher education, spirituality and schooling, and alternative health and healing. She started her career as a teacher and Vice-Principal in Nairobi, Kenya, and then came to Canada to complete her M.Ed. (University of New Brunswick) and PhD (U of T).
In her note to the University community, Vice-President Hildyard noted, "Professor Wane is highly regarded as a teacher, supervisor and a mentor of Master's and doctoral students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education."
Njoki's interest in women's issues is long-standing. Recently, she completed a major Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant as the principal investigator, “Black Canadian Feminisms” and is a co-applicant on a newly approved major SSHRC grant, “Engaging Girls, Changing Communities: Examining Girls’ Processes of Civic Engagement and Leadership.” She has published extensively on race and gender; included among her many recent publications is an article in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Education entitled “Black Feminist Thought: Perspectives on Equity and Diversity in the Academy”.
