My research compares the mobilizing discourses and tactics used by Black activists in Halifax, Nova Scotia and London, Ontario to prompt policy change in policing and public health policy. I focus specifically on the ways that these activists use and sometimes reject coalition-building across difference to exploit the political and discursive opportunities that arise in municipal and provincial governing institutions.

This work combines interpretive policy analysis, autoethnographic insights, interviews with Black organizers and policymakers in both jurisdictions and archival research to address a significant gap in the study of Canadian politics: a rich and detailed understanding of Black social movements in mid-sized cities. By locating where political opportunities might lie for African Canadian activists in health and criminal justice, and under what contexts these opportunities might lead to movement successes, this work centres the experiences and expertise of movement actors. I recognize these actors as contextually situated and informed, but also adept at tactically manoeuvring to advance activist claims against and in concert with governing institutions.

My theoretical approach combines Canadian Political Development and Critical Race Theory to focus on the tactics and discourses that activists use to contest racial institutional orders that uphold concepts of Black inferiority. This approach includes a focus on the durability of racial institutional orders, as well as detailing how intercurrence creates durable shifts in these orders over time.

CV

You can read my full CV here.