Ahead of African Heritage Month this February, Mount Saint Vincent University is accepting nominations for the next presenter in its biannual Black and Indigenous Speaker Series. Until Jan 31, people are encouraged to submit their request using this form to invite a Black and/or Indigenous scholar to MSVU to share their work through an online presentation and conversation, which will be open to the public.
Speakers nominated for the series, per MSVU’s website, “should identify as Black, Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) or Aboriginal; be an active contributor to an academic discipline or professional field; and be affiliated with an academic institution, research institution, or college.”
Any questions regarding the nomination process or the series can be sent to speakerseries@msvu.ca
The series, hosted by MSVU’s Research Office, began in February 2021 with a presentation from Dr. OmiSoore Dryden, a Black queer femme and associate professor who is the James R Johnston Endowed Chair in Black Canadian Studies within the Faculty of Medicine and Interim Director of the newly established Black Studies in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Medicine (STEMM) Research Institute at Dalhousie University. Dryden launched the series with a presentation on critical race theory, #BlackLivesMatter and health care. There have been 10 speakers since Dryden, including three more in the series’ inaugural year from:
- Dr. S. Michelle Driedger, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba and a former Tier II Canadian Research Chair.
- Dr. Pamela Palmater, an activist, lawyer, professor and chair in Indigenous Governance at Toronto Metropolitan University.
- Dr. Katharine McKittrick, associate professor of Black and Gender Studies at Queen’s University.
The series aims to highlight and engage with the contributions and knowledge of presenting scholars while acknowledging the experiences of doing research and academic work as Black and Indigenous people. The seven most recent presentations are available to watch here, including the latest from Nov 6. This talk was given by Randy Headley, MSVU’s Black Student Advisor and founder of the university’s Afrocentric Support Group.
Headley, whose research areas include Africentricity, critical race theory and equity, diversity and inclusion through an Africentric lens, discussed the underrepresentation of Black students in research in post-secondary places, including MSVU. In his talk, “Unpacking the Underrepresentation of Black Students in Research at MSVU,” he explained the negative consequences of this lack of perspective on academia as a whole and, based on his own experiences working with Black students, offered a much-needed strategy to address this problem.
This article appears in Dec 19, 2024 – Jan 31, 2025.
