Affiliate faculty

Manvi Arora

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2024 - May 31, 2026)

Manvi Arora (she/her or they) is originally from India and completed her Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the School of Social Work, University of Montreal. She is also an associate researcher with the Association for Transgender Health in India (ATHI) and serves as an Associate Editor on the editorial board of the International Journal of Transgender Health (Taylor and Francis). She holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Delhi, along with three post-graduate degrees in Psychology, Sociology, and Education.

Manvi has been actively working with the Indian transgender and hijra community for over a decade, advocating for their educational and identity-based rights at the grassroots level. She was one of the authors and panel members involved in the development of National Guidelines and Teacher Training Materials for the inclusion of transgender children in school education, in collaboration with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Government of India. Her journey in academia has been marked by rigorous research, impactful teaching, and a commitment to advancing critical perspectives in education. Her interdisciplinary expertise informs her research into the lived experiences and social trajectories of individuals from marginalized communities, especially those who do not conform to prescribed gender norms—a largely overlooked area in Indian academic research. Currently, she is a co-author of the CIHR-funded international longitudinal research project, Growing Up Trans, which amplifies the voices of Indian transgender and non-binary youth on a global platform.

Research Keywords:

• Identity and Gender-Based Rights of Indian Women and LGBTQ+ Communities.
  
• Interplay Between Education as a Social Institution, Systemic Oppression, Identity Development, and the Well-Being of LGBTQ+ Learners and Their Families.
  
• Gender Affirmation of Transgender and Nonbinary Adolescents.
  
• Narratives of Heteronormativity, Cisgenderism, and Transnormativity in gender discourse.
  
• Decolonization of Indian Education.
  
• Social Determinants of Transgender Health.
• Anti-Oppressive, Decolonial, Feminist, Queer, Intersectional, and Trans-Affirmative Research Methodologies.

Contact Manvi Arora

Syeda Nayab Bukhari

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2024 - May 31, 2026)

Syeda earned her doctorate from the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University and completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at McGill University. Currently, she teaches courses in social sciences at Concordia University as a part-time faculty member, covering topics such as Qualitative Research Methods, Global Migration, Gender and Human Rights issues. She is also leading research and policy to advance the economic performance and outcomes for immigrant women in Canada's STEM fields at TGC. 

With expertise in qualitative research, teaching, project management, knowledge sharing and networking in community-based programs, she has dedicated her efforts to understanding the lived experiences of marginalized and minority ethnic communities in Canada. Her areas of interest span race, class and gender; immigration and settlement; ethnic media; health care management; and community-based programs for disadvantaged groups. She is also serving as the director and head of programming for the South Asian Film Festival of Montreal. Syeda has authored and co-authored articles, reports and book chapters in her respective fields. Her ultimate aspiration is to create visual research projects that make research accessible and understandable to the general public and contribute to community development beyond academia.

Research keywords

• Economic Performance and Outcomes for Immigrant Women in STEM
• Race, Class and Gender; Immigration and Settlement
• Community-Based Programs for Disadvantaged Groups
• Lived Experiences of Marginalized and Minority Ethnic Communities
• Community Development Beyond Academia; Qualitative Research

Contact Syeda Nayab Bukhari at Concordia or at Tech Girls Canada

Dolores Chew

Affiliate Associate Professor (June 1, 2025 - May 31, 2027)

Dolores received her PhD (History) from the University of Calcutta (Bengal, India) – Hindu women and property rights in colonial law; MA from Concordia University (History) – Social reform and women in colonial Bengal; and BA at Concordia University (Asian Studies).

Anti-racist feminist engagement informs Dolores’ teaching, activism and research. Her recent work have appeared in Andrews, Simi Raj, Anglo-Indian Identity, Past and Present, in India and the Diaspora (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021); DiGeorgio-Lutz, Gosbee, Women and Genocide - an Anthology (Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2016); Luther et al, Resilience and Triumph. Immigrant Women Tell Their Stories (Second Story, 2015); Canadian Woman Studies Reader (2015); International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies 15:1 (2015); Montreal Serai (2014); Boyd, The Search for Lasting Peace, Critical Perspectives on Gender-Responsive Human Security (Ashgate, 2014).

Research keywords

• Women and Genocide (Gujarat, India)
• Gender Representations and Multiraciality (Anglo-Indians; Colonial and Post-Colonial)
• Feminism and Intersectionality (Québec and Canada).

Contact Dolores Chew

Maihemuti (Dil) Dilimilati (he/him)

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2025 – May 31, 2027)

Dil is a scholar and educator working at the intersection of migration, equity, and critical social theory. He holds a PhD from McGill University and recently completed postdoctoral research at Concordia University examining how racialized Muslim communities in Canada, including Uyghur women, navigate systemic Islamophobia, anti-Muslim laws, and social marginalization. His research employs decolonial, anti-racist, and intersectional approaches to explore how identity, policies, and resistance shape the daily experiences of underrepresented groups.

With a background in qualitative and community-based research, his work investigates how displacement, surveillance, and social exclusion influence racialized diasporic communities. He has published on topics including migration, epistemic justice, Islamophobia, extremism, mental health, and gender, with a focus on amplifying the voices of communities often sidelined in academic and policy discourse.

Also, as a part-time course lecturer at McGill University, he supports pre-service teachers in critically engaging with topics such as citizenship, pluralism, secularism, and other contentious issues in Quebec and beyond.

Research keywords

    • Decolonization; Anti-racism; Anti-Islamophobia; Gender

    • Migration; displacement; Mental health

    • Community-based research; Diaspora and identity; Epistemic justice

    • Education; Extremism, Social justice in Quebec and beyond

Contact Dil Maihemuti

Kathleen O'Grady 

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2025 - May 31, 2027)

Kathleen is a writer, editor and political and media strategist. In addition to being an Affiliate of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, she is an author and editor of numerous books and articles on health policy, women's and cultural issues and is a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Writers' Union of Canada.

She is the Founding Director of QUOI Media Group Inc., specializing in political, policy and media research and strategy consulting. She has written and edited speeches and op-eds for Nobel laureates, government Ministers, Senators, Members of Parliament and Provincial Parliament, University and College Presidents, academics and artists. Her regular client list includes the Senate of Canada, a number of Ottawa-based think tanks, universities, professional societies and non-profit organizations.

Her writings on health, sexuality and women's and cultural issues have appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers in North America, including: the Chicago Tribune, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Seattle Times and many more. Her book publications include Making Evidence Matter in Canadian Health Policy (CIHR); Canadian Health Policy in the News (CIHR); Sweet Secrets (Sumach); French Feminism and Religion (Routledge); Religion in French Feminist Thought (Routledge) and Bodies, Lives, Voices (Sheffield). She has also authored children's fiction, including First Words: Patti Kay's Dreamworks (Bayeux). She was the former Managing Editor of EvidenceNetwork.ca (2011-2018) and the Editor of Network, the national bilingual magazine of the Canadian Women's Health Network (2001-2008).

Kathleen has been educated in the field of religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo and the University of Cambridge, UK. She lectured in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary and WLU. She was a Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar and a former Bank of Montréal Visiting Scholar at the University of Ottawa. She is a volunteer editor with Wikipedia, Canada Project and on the advisory committee for the Strongest Families Institute. She was previously on the board of directors for Girls Action Foundation.

Research keywords

• Canadian Health Policy; Media
• Autism - as they relate to both Canadian girls and women
• The thoretical work of Julia Kristeva

Contact Kathleen O'Grady

Learn more about Kathleen O'Grady online

• Official website
• Quoi Media Inc.
• X (Twitter)
• Threads
• LinkedIn

Zara Saeidzadeh

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2025 - May 31, 2027)

Zara holds a PhD in Gender Studies from Örebro University, Sweden. In addition to her LLM in International Human Rights Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the UK, she completed her MA in Sociology of Law at Lund University in Sweden. For the past decade, Zara has focused on the socio-legal recognition of trans* people in both conducting research and teaching. In her current research project, Zara examines violence against trans* women in Sweden through the lenses of epistemic recognition and trans* citizenship.

Research keywords

• Trans* Studies; Sexuality and Gender Politics
• Sociology of Law; Politics of Recognition
• Qualitative Research; Feminist Methodologies

Contact Zara Saeidzadeh at the Örebro University or at Concordia University

Sandra Smele

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2024 - May 31, 2026)

Sandra Smele trained as a Sociologist at Concordia and York University. She has conducted and contributed to research focused on social gerontology, gender, care, sexuality, disability, racism, abuse and inclusion for over a decade. In addition to being an Affiliate of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, she is also the Coordinator of Expertise in Inclusive Aging, Diversity, Health and Well-Being at the Centre for Research and Expertise in Social Gerontology. 

Contact Sandra Smele

Esmeralda Thornhill

Affiliate Professor (June 1, 2025 - May 31, 2028)

Esmeralda Thornhill is a lawyer, linguist, and pedagogue by training, a professor, lecturer, researcher, anti-racism trainer and writer by experience, and a community organizer by conviction.

Since 2014, she has been a Research Associate affiliated with the Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Concordia University. Having worked in the Human Rights field of anti-racist education for many decades, she retired in 2016 from her position as a tenured Full Professor of Law at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law in Nova Scotia, where, from 1996-2002 she was appointed the first scholar to anchor and pilot the distinguished James Robinson Johnston Endowed Chair in Black Canadian Studies, an unprecedented national initiative “established to bring Black culture, reality, perspectives, experiences, and concerns into the Academy.”

The first African Canadian Woman to hold a tenured Full Professorship in Law in the country (Dalhousie 1996), Esmeralda Thornhill is a member called to the provincial Bars of both Quebec (1987) and Nova Scotia (1998). In addition to being  a 2006-2007 Canada-US Fulbright Visiting Scholar (Temple University, Philadelphia, USA), in 2012 she was invited by McGill University to inaugurate the O’Brien Fellowship in Residence targeting Human Rights professionals.

In December 1996, the City University of New York conferred on Esmeralda Thornhill the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, and then in June 1997, Concordia University (Montreal) invited her not only to accept an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree, but also to deliver the 1997 Arts & Science Convocation Address. In 2023, Dr. Thornhill was the recipient the Simone de Beauvoir Institute Prize.

Her academic training includes Post Graduate Studies in Spanish, French, and Pedagogical Sciences at the Université de Montréal, McGill, and Denver Universities.

She holds a Law degree from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and a Diploma in International and Comparative Law from the University of San Diego (Paris, France). Fluently trilingual in English, French and Spanish, this scholar has completed international internships examining ‘race’ both in England and in France at UNESCO headquarters.

Contact Esmeralda Thornhill

Farida Abla

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2024)

Farida has expertise in many fields, including literature, autobiography, diaspora communities, women's life writings, feminist theory, translation and teaching. She holds a PhD in Humanities from Concordia University and is a certified translator (OTTIAQ & STIBC). She also has extensive experience teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) and university level courses in her field of expertise, such as “Feminism & Autobiography,” a course she taught at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia in 2019.

Her doctoral thesis, entitled Diasporic Iranian Women’s Life Writing: An Analysis Using a Transnational Feminist Lens, focuses on deconstructing the works of Iranian Women in diaspora in the US and Canada where they wrote autobiographies in English. She questions and analyzes the voices of Iranian women in diaspora using a transnational feminist lens. She studies the effects of the English language within diaspora literature, their portrayal in media and their reception and audience in North America in particular. She also explores the social, economic, political and religious circumstances they experienced and portrayed in their memoirs.

Research keywords

• Transnational Feminism; Iranian Women Diaspora
• Cultural Studies; Autobiographies; Life Writing

Contact Farida Abla

Jade Almeida (she/her)

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2025)

Originally from Guadeloupe, Jade Almeida completed her Doctorate in Sociology under the supervision of Sirma Bilge. Her thesis focuses on Black women who love women: resistance to intertwined power dynamics. As a content creator, she shares educational content on her website addressing issues related to anti-racism, anti-imperialism and anti-prison struggle, among others. She also contributes as a columnist in the À Babord! magazine, serves as a project coordinator at the Conseil Québécois LGBT and co-founded Harambec, an organization dedicated to advocating for the rights of Black women and non-binary Black individuals.

Research keywords

• Black Women; Ethnicity; Intersectionality
• Queer; (homo)Sexuality(ies)
• Race; Diaspora.

Contact Jade Almeida

Sima Aprahamian

Affiliate Associate Professor (June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2024)

Sima holds a doctoral degree in Anthropology granted at McGill University. She is currently working on the following projects: a virtual museum of objects that have survived the Armenian Genocide and are in Canada and their stories; narratives of Displacement; and Ottoman women's movement(s). Her doctoral dissertation (based on fieldwork in the Beka’a valley of Lebanon, funded by SSHRC) was entitled The Inhabitants of Haouch Moussa. She has been organizing several panels in academic conferences over the years on literary responses to genocide, feminist perspectives on genocide, as well as publishing and presenting papers on identity issues, gender and genocide.

Research keywords

• Feminist Anthropology; Feminist Perspectives on Genocide
• Gender, Race, Class, Sexuality; Identities
• Literary Criticism

Karin Doerr

Affiliate Associate Professor (June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2024)

Karin Doerr taught German culture, language and literature, as well as courses on women and genocide at Concordia. She is a member of the Canadian Institute for Genocide Studies, the Canadian Academic Council for the Study of Anti-Semitism; the Women Institute in New York; the University Women’s Club of Montreal and advisor and contributor to the Toronto website Women and the Holocaust. Her international publications and lectures have focused on trauma expressed in art and poetry; antisemitism in literature; and the Holocaust. Her main research area is the political influence on linguistic expression, particularly in National Socialist Germany. She co-authored An English Lexicon of the Language of the Third Reich and a German dictionary study of “Germany’s Language of Genocide at the Turn of the Century.” Working with Holocaust survivors, she also examined the impact of the language of genocide on victims. Her latest publication is a translation of Franz Kafka’s last story with an analytical introduction. She is presently working on a cultural-sociological study of the life of the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, as well as a new revised and expended edition of the Lexicon.

Research keywords

• Language of National-Socialist Germany
• Impact of Genocidal Language on Victims; Trauma in Art and Poetry
• Women and the Holocaust; Antisemitism in Literature
• Author Franz Kafka; Poet Paul Celan; Artist Ruth Liberman
• Revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg

Contact Karin Doerr

Kristin M. Franseen 

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2021 - May 31, 2024)

Kristin has a PhD (Musicology) from McGill, a MA (Music History) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and is a FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow in the History Department at Concordia University. Her research examines the place of gossip, anecdote and fiction as historical sources in musicology and composer biography, the development of queer musicological methods and women’s work across the history of the music research disciplines. Her publications include articles in the scholarly journals Music & Letters, 19th-Century Music and the Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique (SQRM), as well as in the VAN and Contingent magazines. Her monograph Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch and Edward Prime-Stevenson is forthcoming from Clemson University Press.

Research keywords

• Feminist and Queer Musicology; Music Biography
• Gossip as Historical Source
• Music; Fiction

Contact Kristin Franseen

Dorothy Geller

Affiliate Associate Professor (June 1, 2021 - May 31, 2024)

Contact Dorothy Geller

Dana Hearne

Affiliate Associate Professor (June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2024)

Contact Dana Hearne

Pauline McKenzie Aucoin

Affiliate Associate Professor (June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2024)

Contact Pauline McKenzie Aucoin

Shaheen Akhter Munir 

Affiliate Assistant Professor (June 1, 2023 - May 31, 2024)

Contact Shaheen Akhter Munir