Black Studies @Concordia with Tesfa "Aki" Peterson & Dr. Nicola Smith

Описание: Moderated by Amaechi Okafor, join us for Session IV of 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 next 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.

Speakers
Tesfa "Aki" Peterson
Tesfa Peterson is currently a PhD student in the Humanities department at Concordia University, in Montreal Canada. Her current work, tentatively titled “Diaspora Reverberations and Community Groundings”, engages a praxis of grassroots community transformation through education, as espoused in the work or Caribbean intellectual Walter Rodney. She is currently working in her home communities of LaDigue, Chantimelle in Grenada and in Montreal to develop a diasporic project that incorporates oralities and heritage preservation as the basis of community education and transformation. Tesfa has worked for many years in community education, and activism both in Montreal and in Grenada and believes passionately in the importance of community collaboration as a critical feature of intellectual life.

Dr. Nicola Smith
Dr. Nicola Smith is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Concordia University where she studies climate change impacts on marine systems, marine invasions, and their interactions. She is an Associate Editor for NeoBiota, a peer-reviewed, open access journal on biological invasions. She is also an Editorial Board Member for Discover Oceans, a new open-access journal on all fields related to oceanography and marine sciences.

Dr. Smith obtained a Hons. B.Sc. with High Distinction from the University of Toronto in 2006, where she double majored in English and Zoology. In 2010, she received a M.Sc. in Zoology from the University of British Columbia while in 2020 she obtained a Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Simon Fraser University.

She has over a decade of experience researching various aspects of biological invasions, coral reef ecology, and tropical fisheries. She has published several studies on the Indo-Pacific lionfish invasion of the Caribbean and on unreported fisheries catches, particularly as it pertains to recreational fishing in the Global South. She has received numerous awards, including a 2024 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery grant, a 2024 NSERC Early Career Supplement, a 2021 Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellowship, the 2018 Bullitt Environmental Prize, a graduate scholarship from the Organization of American States, and a professional development grant from the Society for Conservation Biology, Latin America and Caribbean Section. She has headed two Global Environment Facility/United Nations Environment Programme (GEF/UNEP) funded projects on marine invasive species in the Caribbean.

Amaechi Okafor (Moderator)
Amaechi Okafor is a Nigerian scholar and a doctoral candidate in History at Concordia University, Montreal, where he is researching migrant Black African Mormons and Adventists in North America. Asking questions about adaptation and evolution of these migrants based on their religious affiliations and how these affiliations either aids their integration or foster their isolation in their host societies. His enthusiasm for acquiring new knowledge has significantly shaped his academic pursuits. His research interests include religion, ethnicity, culture (both foreign and indigenous), history, identity, and the experiences of minority groups, among others. He has authored several books and articles, many of which are accessible both online and in print, with a primary focus on his areas of interest. He has also conducted oral history on Mormonism and Migration within Nigeria, this project was curated and sponsored by the Claremont Graduate University (CGU). The oral history audios, videos and transcripts are housed in the digital libraries at CGU. Amaechi has presented his findings in conferences in the US, Mexico, Canada and Nigeria.

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.