Dr. Natalie Kouri-Towe

Bio

Natalie Kouri-Towe/NKT is an Associate Professor of feminism and sexuality at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. Her research investigates the politics of solidarity under neoliberalism, with areas of focus ranging across responses to war in the Middle East, refugee crises, queer activism, and gender and sexuality pedagogies. Her edited collection, Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom (Concordia University Press 2024), connects to her new research on transformative pedagogies. In October 2025, she launched the Transformative Pedagogies Lab at Concordia University, a research space for the collaborative development and dissemination of scholarship and popular education tools on gender and sexuality pedagogies.

The Transformative Pedagogies Lab projects: 

(1) Transformative Encounters: Gender and Sexuality Pedagogies in Canada, a SSHRC Insight-funded study on post-secondary learning experiences; 

(2) The Transformation Hub: Gender and Sexuality-Based Violence Prevention Through Transformative Education, a community-based partnership with Project 10 and Éduconnexion to develop popular education tools for violence prevention; and 

(3) Better Practices in the Classroom: A Teaching Guidebook for Sustainable, Inclusive, and Equitable Learning from a Gender and Sexuality Studies Framework, an open educational resource published in 2021 and revised and republished in 2024.

Education

Research Interests

Affiliations

Awards and Grants

Courses

Book Projects

Solidarity at Risk (in progress) examines the friction of feminist and queer solidarity under neoliberalism and the attending risks placed on contemporary practices of transnational solidarity through the convergence of global capitalism, human rights discourses, and shifting ideologies of selfhood. I contend that we must reconsider how solidarity in the 21st century is formulated in order to effectively understand the relationship between contemporary projects for social transformation and new practices of governance in an era shaped by globalization. The book traces the history of solidarity and its debates in transnational feminist theory and politics to consider how ruptures in social movements emerge temporally and ideologically across the late 20^th and early 21^st century. Turning to debates in feminist activism and social movements the book interrogates how sexuality and subjectivity have emerged as markers of feminist and queer activism and proposes a way forward beyond fragmentation for social movements organizing today.

Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom (Concordia University Press 2024) is an open access edited book featuring leading gender and sexuality scholars from across Canada. The book invites readers across disciplines into the conversations happening within our field's classrooms on topics ranging from foundational learning, to applied learning, tackling racism within our courses, and tackling requests for trigger warnings. 

Graduate Supervision

• gender and sexuality pedagogies;
• gender and sexuality in responses to war in the Middle East;
• queer social movements and activism.

• a description of your research project and how your project fits within one of the areas of research focus outlined above;
• a short explanation of what kind of role you'd like me to take on your committee;
  
• the name and contact information of your primary supervisor;
• a timeline of your graduate program.

Refereed Books

Natalie Kouri-Towe (ed). 2024. Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom. Montreal: Concordia University Press.

Open Access version: https://press.library.concordia.ca/projects/reading-the-room

Teaching Guide

Kouri-Towe, Natalie and Myloe Martel-Perry. 2024. Better Practices in the Classroom: A Teaching Guidebook for Sustainable, Inclusive, and Equitable Learning from a Gender and Sexuality Studies Framework. Montreal: Concordia University Library Pressbooks.

Refereed Publications

Edited Collections

Mahrouse, Gada and Natalie Kouri-Towe (eds). 2023. “Departures, Encounters, and Arrivals: Feminist Geopolitical Approaches to Studying Human Mobilities and Borders.” Special issue, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. 22(4).

Carastathis, Anna, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Gada Mahrouse, and Leila Whitley (eds). 2018. Feminist Interventions in ‘Crisis’: Intersectionality, Refugees, and Migration. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. 34(1).

Book Chapters

Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2022. “Affective Pedagogies, and Pedagogies of Affect: Gender, Solidarity, and the Classroom in the Trigger Warning Debates.” The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect. Ed. Todd Reeser. London: Routledge.

Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2016. “Queer.” Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle. Eds. Kelly Fritsch, Clare O’Connor, and AK Thompson. AK Press: 335-341. 

Book Reviews

Kouri-Towe, Natalie. 2016. Ethical Imperatives in Transnational Solidarity. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. 35: 213-216.

Roundtables

Public Writing