Jane’s research interests emphasize community activism, feminism and antiracism. Her experience of working inter-disciplinarily in Canadian Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Sociology and being a cross-listed faculty has led to her to approach feminism as what we do rather than who we are, and intersectionality as a moving intersection of struggles and histories rather than of identities. How we take up political projects and strategically make ourselves is just as important as making a claim about who we are. Her research has included racism, immigrant settlement and postcolonial diasporic experiences of race and gender. She is currently involved in research projects on African-centered community capacity and partnership building, immigrant youth resilience, and Japanese Canadian art and activism. She is also working on an autoethnographic exploration of her racialized and gendered identity (Indian, Chinese and Canadian feminist) and the consequent political and activist implications. Her research has come full circle from studying the experiences of racism in the university as a graduate student and working with the Anti-Racist Network, a student organization at OISE/UT through researching immigrant integration during much of her time at the University of Windsor to more recently, rethinking how much racism has changed and much remains the same with the publication of “‘Canadian Experience’ Discourse and Anti-Racialism in a ‘Post-Racial’ Society” in the Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Her paper will take on immigrant settlement literature and explore the way in which it has ignored questions of racialization and racism, and how this can contribute to the marginalization of immigrants and their cultures and reproducing white supremacy. The paper will attempt to redefine questions of belonging and integration through the critique of racial incorporation and in the process, show how the construction of our identities as “ethnic”, “immigrants” or as “racial” create possibilities for very different forms of subjecthood, activism and political engagements.
Ayesha Mian Akram , Doctoral Student, Sociology
Ayesha Mian Akram is a SSHRC-funded PhD student in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology at the University of Windsor. Her doctoral research is a participatory project focused on the transformative potential of Muslim women activists in post-secular Canada. She was a 2017 Final Five SSHRC Storyteller for her work with a SSHRC-funded cross-sectoral research partnership uncovering the gaps in employment standards enforcement in Ontario. She is a community educator, researcher, and activist, committed to feminist and antiracism efforts. She has a regular column in the Canadian magazine, Herizons, called Intersections, which examines issues facing young feminists within a context of intersectionality. She holds a Master's degree in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Alberta, where she conducted a qualitative project to study how racism impacts the identity negotiations of Canadian-born Muslim women who practice hijab.
As an antiracist junior scholar and activist, amidst the backdrop of tremendous social change in the past few months, I question, how have antiracist activists changed the way they engage in social activism? What does it mean to be an antiracist activist at a time like this? As individual activists, how do we determine how we prioritize our activist engagements and platforms? As a SSHRC-funded doctoral student with a background in anti-Muslim racism research, I am interested in considering the possibilities and challenges of engaging in antiracist activism at a time of heightened social and political awareness and sensitivity. How can we engage in antiracist efforts both inside and outside our own communities or spheres of influence? What are the ethics and considerations around engaging in antiracist activist efforts outside of our communities?