Black Studies @ Concordia

To celebrate the launch of Concordia's Minor in Black and African Diaspora Studies in the Canadian Context - the first in Quebec - this first iteration of the year-long Speaker Series will showcase the research of Black Studies scholars at the university in a conversation moderated by our Black PhD students.

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

Angélique Willkie

Performer, dramaturg and mentor, Angélique pursued a 25-year career in Europe in dance, circus and music. She is active in Montreal’s professional dance community and is the 2022 recipient of the Prix de la danse de Montréal, catégorie Interprète. Associate Professor of Contemporary Dance at Concordia University, her research interests focus on interdisciplinary creation and decolonial dramaturgies. She holds a Concordia University Research Chair in Ecologies of B/black Performance, chaired the President’s Task Force on Anti-Black Racism and is Special Advisor to the Provost on Black Integration and Knowledges. Artist in residence at USINE C | Centre de creation, Angélique is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. 

Christiana Abraham

Christiana Abraham is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. She is also the inaugural Director of the Black and African-Diaspora Studies in the Canadian context (Minor) at Concordia University and served as a subcommittee lead on Concordia University President’s Task Force on anti-Black racism. She holds a Ph.D in Communication Studies from McGill University. Her teaching and research specialties are in Black media and cultural studies, visual representations and culture, de/post-coloniality and gender, race, ethnicity and media, and transnational and Global South media practices. She is a former lecturer in Communication Studies from the University at the West Indies, St Augustine Campus.  A scholar, media practitioner and independent curator, her scholarship is interested in the radical re-thinking of archives, community and orality as forms of grounded grass-roots activism that critically re-narrate established aesthetics, canons and cultural knowledges. She is the author of several academic articles and book chapters whose writings have been featured in The Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, Atlantis, Topia, Journal of Curatorial Studies, Plos Climate, among others. She recently co-edited a special Issue on ‘The Scarbrough Charter on Black Inclusion in Higher Education in Canada,’ in the Journal Atlantis. She is the curator of ‘Protests and Pedagogy: Representations Memories and Meanings’, a travelling archival exhibition on the Sir George Williams student protest. Her current research activities focus on visualities of the Sir George Williams Student Protest, Decolonizing Public Monuments, and Grassroots Transnational Narratives on the Windrush Migration.

Judith Muindisi (moderator)

Judith Muindisi is a researcher, educator, and heritage specialist with more than two decades of professional experience in heritage conservation and consultancy in Southern Africa. She holds a Masters of Arts in Heritage Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Archaeology from the University of Zimbabwe. She is the co-founder and partner of a heritage consultancy based in Johannesburg, South Africa and she is currently pursuing a PhD. in Art History at Concordia University. Her scholarly interests include urban placemaking, oral histories, the representation of legacies, footprints and geographies of Black memories, contested spaces, critical race theories and the shaping of urban landscapes and policies through the narratives and lived experiences of marginalized communities.

Organized by Angélique Willkie, special advisor, Black Integration & Knowledges; Badewa Ajibade (PhD student) with the support of Christiana Abraham, Minor program director and the Office of the Dean, FAS.