Education
Ph.D Communication Studies, McGill University
MA Media Studies, Concordia University
BA Communication Studies, Concordia University
Teaching and Research Specialization
Critical Race Studies and Pedagogies
Race, Ethnicity & Media
Decolonial, Post/neo-Colonial Representations
Visuality, Representations and Culture
Gender & Development Communications; Rural Communications
Media and Propaganda Studies
South-South/Global South Communications
Biography
Christiana Abraham's teaching and research focuses on Critical Race Studies; Race, Ethnicity and Media; Visual Representations and Culture; Post/de-colonialism and Gender and Transnational and Global-South Media Practices. She has also taught Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus.
Her academic interventions are grounded in field experiences and expertise in media and Development-Communication. She holds extensive experiences in media practice having worked as a television news anchor, journalist and talk show host in the Caribbean. She was also Features editor of an international lifestyle magazine in Canada.
As a rural communications specialist, she coordinated several United Nations funded development-communication projects in the Global South. She is also an independent Curator, whose work revolves around the radical re-thinking of archives, community and orality as forms of grounded grass-roots activism that critically reclaims and re-narrates established aesthetics, cannons and cultural knowledges. Her scholarship in interested in the destabilisation and re-visualization of visuality in anti-racist and de-colonial pedagogies.
Dr. Abraham is the curator of “Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories, and Meanings” an archival exhibition that marked the 50th anniversary of the Sir George Williams Students Protests. Held at Concordia University, the exhibition offered a rare glimpse into the archival records related to these 1969 protests.
Prior to this, she curated the photographic exhibition: “From the Archives to the Everyday: Caribbean Visualities and Meanings”. This experimental research and curating project engaged audience readings of vintage family photographs through complex, dynamic views of Caribbean life.
Academic/Research/Community Skills
Researcher, Writer
Lecturer
Independent Visual Curator
Development Communication/Rural Communication Specialist
Community Activist
Journalist
Media practitioner, Producer
Selected
Abraham, Christiana. "Critical Curating as Decolonial Practice: Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories and Meanings—Anatomy of an Exhibition." TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 44, 2022, p. 67-93. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/854453
https://utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/topia-2020-0018
Abraham, Christiana ""I Won't Take Bail Until We All Get It": Gender, Black Power, 1960s Student activism and the Sir George Williams Affair—An interview with Brenda Dash." TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 44, 2022, p. 48-66. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/854465.
https://utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/topia-2021-0019
Abraham Christiana. Toppled Monuments and Black Lives Matter: Race Gender and Decolonization in the Public Space. An Interview with Charmaine A. Nelson. Atlantis. Vol. 42.1 2021, pp1-17
https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/5552/4744
Christiana Abraham. 'Race, Gender and 'Difference: Representations of Third World Women in International Development' in Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, Vol.2. No.2 (2015) pp 4-24
https://jcri.ca/index.php/CRI/article/view/4723
Archival Exhibition Protests, Pedagogy and Art
Archival Exhibiton Curator: Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories and Meanings'
4th Space, Concordia University
An exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Students' occupation of the Computer Centre, Sir George Williams University. This is one of Canada's most important student's protests.
The exhibition presents archival images, sounds, documents, media of the events. It also offers current creative artistic interpretations related to legacies and lessons to be learnt from the event.
https://protestsandpedagogy.ca
