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Internal Fellows

Tshepo Internal Fellows hold academic appointments at Wilfrid Laurier University. This includes full-time or part-time faculty members at Laurier University who have a demonstrated interest in the research agenda and/or activities of The Tshepo Institute for the Study of Contemporary Africa, who submitted a request to the Director to be an Internal Fellow, and whose request has been accepted by Tshepo's Council. 

 


CURRENT FELLOWS

 

Dr. Ehaab Abdou, Assistant Professor of Global Studies

Dr. Ehaab Abdou is an Assistant Professor of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research seeks to contribute to rendering curriculum and classroom practices more holistic and inclusive, especially of historically marginalized worldviews, epistemologies, wisdom traditions, narratives, and contributions. His recent publication is Modern Education and National Identity in Greece and Egypt: (Re)producing the Ancient in the School  In D. Tröhler, N. Piattoeva, & W. Pinar (Eds.), World Yearbook in Education, Schooling and the Global Universalization of Banal Nationalism.

 

Dr. Robert Ame, Associate Professor, Human Rights and Criminology (Director 2012-14)

Dr. Robert Ame is the former Director of Tshepo from 2012 to 2014 and an Associate Professor of Human Rights and Criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Robert’s research interests are in the areas of youth justice, children’s rights with a focus on female ritual servitude (trokosi), the overrepresentation of Black youth in the Canadian criminal justice system, truth and reconciliation commissions, and International Service Learning (ISL). Robert is currently PI on a SSHRC-funded study of the impact of bi-directional North-South International Service Learning (ISL) programs on host communities in the Global South, with a specific focus on the Laurier-Ghana Partnership program that has been running for more than 10 years.

 

Dr. Bree Akesson, Associate Professor, Social Work and Canada Research Chair, Global Adversity and Wellbeing

Dr. Bree Akesson is Canada Research Chair in Global Adversity and Wellbeing and Associate Professor of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research focuses broadly on international social work, ranging from micro-level understandings of the experiences of children and families affected by war to macro-level studies on social service and mental health system strengthening. Bree is currently working on a SSHRC-funded mixed-methods study of the resettlement experiences of refugees in Ontario, a SSHRC-funded phenomenological study of the experiences of pregnancy loss among Syrian refugee families living in Lebanon, and she has published the book From Bullets to Bureaucracy: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home with Andrew R. Basso (2022).  

 

Dr. Abderrahman Beggar, Professor of Religion and Culture

Dr. Abderrahman (Abdou) Beggar is a Professor and current chair of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University.  His research has been geographically centred in the Maghreb (North Africa), France, and the Americas. Abdou has authored and edited nine books, as well as a special edition of the Review of the Centre for the Studies of the Literatures and Arts of North Africa. He has written dozens of articles (both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed for a more popular audience) and has contributed to several edited volumes. He has also published a series of reflective essays on Latin America as a book called L’Amérique latine sous une perspective maghrébine (translated from the original French to English, Spanish, and Arabic), as well as two short stories and two full-length novels, Le chant de Goubi and L’oeil du chien..Abdou is currently Co-PI on the SSHRC-funded book project Too Perilous to Proceed, Too Ashamed to Return: Life Stories of Sub-Saharan African migrants Stranded in Morocco with Dr. Stacey Wilson-Forsberg.

 

Dr. Kofi Bobi Barimah is a sessional instructor at Wilfrid Laurier University. Kofi was the Foundation Dean of the Faculty of Public Health & Allied Sciences at the Catholic University College of Ghana-Fiapre where he also served as its Dean from 2007-2013. He also served as the first Director of the Night School (now Weekend School).  He is currently the Ag. Executive Director at the Centre for Plant Medicine Research, Mampong Akwapem. He has several publications in health promotion and community development in peer-review journals, coupled with presentations at reputable global conferences. DKofi is the principal author of the book Traditional Medicine in Ghana (2018). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Technology and Entrepreneurship.

 

Dr. Andrea Brown, Associate Professor, Political Science and Balsillie School of International Affairs (Associate Director 2016-20)

Dr. Andrea Brown was the former Associate Director of Tshepo from 2016 to 2020 and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Andrea’s current research has been exploring the policy environments around urban food security and migration in Kenya and Tanzania. In 2022, she published the article “Co-productive urban planning: Protecting and expanding food security in Uganda’s secondary cities.”

 

Dr. Kevin Burrell, Assistant Professor, Religion and Culture

Dr. Kevin Burrell is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. His main research investigates ethnic identity and representation in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East. Of particular interest to me is the history and identity of the ancient Kushites/Nubians of North Africa. He is also interested in the history of the Bible and its role in western identity formation, colonization, and slavery.
 

Dr. Shaunasea Brown

Shaunasea Brown is an Assistant Professor of communication at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research collaborates with artists in Toronto to delineate a specifically second-generation understanding of Black women’s arts practices. She is interested in how Black Canadian women artists of Caribbean descent offer blueprints for living relationally and suggest methods for radical community care. Her research areas are Black (Canadian) studies , Black feminism and womanism, and Black women’s hair politics

 
Dr. Karen Cyrus, Assistant Professor, Community Music (Current Director)

Dr. Karen Cyrus is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has a strong interest in Afrodiasporic community music-making practices, pan-African children’s repertoires, and social justice in music education. Her doctoral research explored sites of struggle and innovation among reggae musicians in Afrodiasporic communities in Jamaica, Toronto, the United States and the United Kingdom from the 1950s to 1990.

 

Prof. Kevin Day

Prof. Kevin Day an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is an internationally acclaimed composer, conductor, and jazz pianist currently based near Toronto, Canada. His music has been performed by some of the world's top soloists, wind bands, and symphony orchestras. He is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship for Music Composition, a winner of the BMI Composer Award, a three-time ASCAP Morton Gould Finalist, and was considered for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. He holds degrees from TCU, the University of Georgia, and is ABD completing his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Miami Frost School of Music. Day is currently Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of Jazz at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. His research interests are Black music, Afro-futurism, jazz and contemporary improvisation, music composition.

 

Dr. Lamine Diallo (Retired 2021), Associate Professor, Leadership (Co-director and Founder of TISCA with Dr. Peter Farrugia 2008-10)

Dr. Lamine Diallo is the former Co-Director and Founder of the Tshepo Institute and Associate Professor of Leadership of Wilfrid Laurier University (Retired 2021). The main focus of his research is on the role and impact of governance and leadership in the African continent. Recent research includes emerging leadership academic programs with a focus on curricular designs. 

 

Dr. John Boye Ejobowah, Associate Professor, Global Studies

Dr. John Boye Ejobowah is an Associate Professor of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research focuses on the political claims of groups and their normative responses. He is particularly interested in claims to citizenship, autonomy claims, multinational federalism, and constitutional design for divided societies. His regional focus is Africa, and his special expertise is Nigeria. 

 

Dr. Paul Emiljanowicz, Assistant Professor, History

Dr. Paul Emiljanowicz is the project manager/managing director of Participedia and a sessional lecturer in the Political Science departments at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo. His research is focused on contributing to reconceptualizing development, the state, and democracy by engaging with the ideas, experiences, and peoples who have traditionally been excluded from the canon(s). Paul’s work is published in Postcolonial Studies [forthcoming], Third World Quarterly, Interventions, Small Axe, Democratization and Routledge, as well as in popular media outlets such as Africa is a Country and The Conversation. 

 

Dr. Maurita T. Harris

Dr. Maurita T. Harris is an Assistant Professor in User Experience Design at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research conducted in the Well-Tech Research & Design Laboratory aims to design inclusive technologies that can support adults with varying abilities to complete their everyday activities, which is heavily influenced by my grandparents, great grandmother, great-aunt, and other members of my familial village who helped raise me. Her research interests are aging, community-based participatory design, health and racial equity, human factors, and technology lifecycle.

 

Dr. M. Raymond Izarali, Associate Professor, Criminology (Director 2010-12)

Dr. Raymond Izarali’s research interests include globalization, global terrorism and security, human rights theory, Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia.  He has published four co-edited books: The Contemporary Caribbean: Issues and Challenges (2013); Security, Education and Development in Contemporary Africa (2017); Expanding Perspective on Human Rights in Africa (2019); and Terrorism, Security and Development in South Asia: National, Regional and Global Implications (2021).  He has also published a sole edited book, Crime, Violence and Security in the Caribbean (2018). His teaching includes courses on policing, penology, and global terrorism and security.  Currently, he is engaged in work focused on Asia, Australia, Canada, and the Caribbean. 

 

Dr. Oliver Masakure, Associate Professor, Business Technology Management and Human Rights (Associate Director 2010-2012, Director 2014-2016, Associate Director 2020-2023)

Dr. Oliver Masakure is the Associate Director of the Tshepo Institute and Associate Professor and current coordinator of the Business Technology program at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research interests include development economics, health economics, and labour economics, with special emphasis on food security, food safety and food trade, innovation and technology, and employment practices in organizations. He is Co-PI on a series of research grants on African immigrant youth and education with Dr. Stacey Wilson-Forsberg. These grants have resulted in a solid research program that has had significant impact in terms of academic publishing, engagement with schools, policy makers and immigrant communities. Outside of the university, Oliver is involved in many community-based and led initiatives. He recently served as a member of the steering committee of the Nelson Mandela Day of Care Task Force (2016-2019) and as its Chairman (2018-2019). The Nelson Mandela Day Taskforce was established by the City of Brantford in 2013 with a mandate to inspire and empower the city’s residents to honour Nelson Mandela’s legacy through acts of volunteerism.

 

Dr. Magnus Mfoafo-M’Carthy, Associate Professor, Social Work (Associate Director 2012-14)

Dr. Magnus Mfoafo-M’Carthy is a former Associate Director of Tshepo from 2012 to 2014 and Associate Professor of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research explores the intersection between mental illness and stigma and its impact on immigrant communities as well as the effectiveness of treatment options for individuals with serious mental illness in the community. He is currently involved in multiple collaborative projects at Laurier’s faculty of social work and the department of social work at the University of Ghana.

 

Dr. Heena Mistry, Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion

Dr. Heena Mistry is an Instructor in the Department of History and the Manager of EDI Training, Planning & Strategic Initiatives at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research examines the relationship between global South Asian diaspora and British imperialism. Her recent publications include the article “The Repatriation Debate after the Abolition of Indenture” and "Reflecting on diverse histories of Remembrance Day in Guelph and beyond."

 

Prof. Thomas Rose, Assistant Professor (sessional) Human Rights and Human Diversity

Prof. Thomas Rose’s academic research has been in the area of journalism and human rights, including the history of media development projects in West Africa, and his research has appeared in the Encyclopaedia of Human Rights and the Yale Journal of International Law.

 

Dr. Akbar Saeed, Associate Professor, Business Technology Management (Director 2016-20)

Dr. Akbar Saeed is a Former Director of Tshepo from 2016 to 2020 and Associate Professor of Business Technology Management at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research areas include organizational routines, healthcare service quality, and humanitarian technologies. He currently studies how technology alters the way we understand ourselves and influences the way we operate in the world. He is currently involved in an ongoing project that investigates patient experience in the emergency room with special consideration to space and artifacts, and another that examines the use of smartphones for data collection.

 

Dr. Edward Shizha, Professor Youth and Children's Studies

Dr. Edward Shizha is a Professor of Society, Culture and Environment, and Youth and Children’s Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research areas include educational and political development in Zimbabwe and Zambia, and the support needs and wellbeing of Zimbabwean and Sudanese refugees to Canada. The main focus of his research is migration and transnationalism, with his most recently completed study being on investigating factors that enhance or frustrate access to postsecondary education for male African immigrant youth transitioning from high school in South Western Ontario. 

 

Dr. Izabela Steflja, Assistant Professor Political Science

Dr. Izabela Steflja is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her main streams of research deal with local perceptions of international criminal trials in post-conflict settings, women’s participation in war crimes in the context of justice for atrocity, and children in armed groups. She asks questions such as: Who are the constituents of international criminal justice? How do we complexify the victim and perpetrator binary in the accountability project?

 

Prof. Dalon P. Taylor

Prof. Dalon P. Taylor is a Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Trent University in the Social Work Department and a part-time lecturer in the University of Windsor’s Master of Social Work for Working Professionals program. Her research interests are Migration, immigration and skilled migration. incorporated with issues of race, racism, anti-Black racism, community engagement [health] inequities and social justice. Dalon’s PhD dissertation work at York University’s school of social work, focuses on the historical and contemporary functioning of race and gender to shape the experiences of Black skilled immigrant women from the Caribbean in the Canadian labour market. Research interests include migration, immigration and skilled migration, anti-Black racism, and community development-health inequities.

 

Dr. Stacey Wilson-Forsberg, Associate Professor, Human Rights and Human Diversity Affairs (Director 2020 - 2023, Current Associate Director)

Stacey Wilson-Forsberg is the current Director of the Tshepo Institute and Associate Professor of Human Rights at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research areas include immigration and multiculturalism. Stacey is presently leading and co-leading (with Dr. Oliver Masakure) several Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded projects focusing on school and labour market transitions of African youth with refugee backgrounds. She also conducts research with irregular Sub-Saharan African migrants in Mexico and Morocco and is currently working on a SSHRC-funded book project called “Life in Unintended Destinations: Narratives of Sub-Saharan African Migrants Stranded in Morocco and Mexico” (with Dr. Abderrahman Beggar).

 

Dr. Gerard Yun, Assistant Professor, Community Music

Dr. Gerad Yun is an Assistant Professor of Community Music at Wilfrid Laurier University. His scholarly and artistic interests include choral improvisation, contemplative music practice and ethics in cross-cultural music performance, shaped by interests in music education, choral singing and the intersections of music as a global phenomenon. Gerard is the artistic director of Waterloo’s East-West Concert Series and serve on a number of community music boards.

 

Past Fellows

Dr. Matthew Wyman–McCarthy

Dr. Matthew Wyman-McCarthy is an accomplished historian and writer specializing in British Abolitionism and Global Empire in the Late Eighteenth Century. His esearch areas include: Atlantic history; slavery and the transatlantic slave trade; the history of race; and European imperialism in Africa. He served as a postdoctoral fellow in the department of history at Columbia University before joining Wilfrid Laurier University as a research facilitator.

 

Dr. Jeff Grischow, History (Associate Director 2014-16)

Dr. Jeff Grischow's research theme include African history (Ghana), and comparative development studies. His research currently focuses on the history and lived experience of disability rights in Ghana. 

Contact Us:

Karen Cyrus, Director

E: kcyrus@wlu.ca

Stacey Wilson-Forsberg, Associate Director

E: swilsonforsberg@wlu.ca