
Speaker Series
research, knowledge, understanding and change
The OEDI’s Courageous Conversation Speaker Series was launched in fall 2020, featuring discussions on racism, anti-racism, colonialism, and complaint.
Inspired by Maya Angelou and Violet King, the series engages the campus community and beyond in difficult conversations about systemic inequities. The series features locally and internationally renowned teachers, researchers, practitioners, and community-engaged scholars and activists by exploring critical questions about what needs to be done to effect sustainable change and ensure accountability.
Identifying, naming, discussing, and tackling historical and contemporary injustices can be profoundly unsettling. That’s where courage comes in – the courage to speak truth to power, to say things that the comfortable might not want to hear. Courageous Conversations are vital to advancing EDI in a university. It ensures that we are discussing EDI and modelling our expressed commitment to human rights, human dignity and cultivating equitable pathways that enable human flourishing.


Courageous Conversations
The series is designed to tackle the durable legacies of colonialism, slavery, and historical and contemporary injustices on higher education and to inspire courageous thinking and practices aimed at transforming the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and contemporary injustices.

Dr. Robyn Maynard is an author and scholar based in Toronto, where she holds the position of Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto-Scarborough in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies. She is the author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present (Fernwood 2017). The book is a national bestseller, designated as one of the “best 100 books of 2017” by the Hill Times, listed in The Walrus‘s “best books of 2018,” shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and the winner of the 2017 Errol Sharpe Book Prize. In 2018 the book was published in French with Mémoire d’encrier, titled NoirEs sous surveillance. Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada. Translated by Catherine Ego, it won the 2019 Prix de libraires in the category of “essais.”
Her most recent published monograph is Rehearsals for Living, co-authored with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, published with Knopf (Canada), Haymarket: Abolitionist Paper Series (US/UK), and forthcoming with Memoire D’encrier (French translation). The book is a Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and CBC National Bestseller.
Maynard is the winner of the “2018 author of the year” award by Montreal’s Black History Month and was nominated for Writer’s Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. She has published writing in the Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, and Scholar & Feminist Journal. Her writing on borders, policing, abolition and Black feminism are taught widely in universities across Canada and the United States.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and the United States and has twenty years of experience with Indigenous land-based education. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh.
Leanne is the author of eight books, including A Short History of the Blockade and the novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the Dublin Literary Prize. This Accident of Being Lost was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award. Her new project, a collaboration with Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living, is a National Best Seller and was short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction. Leanne is also a musician. Her latest release, Theory of Ice, was named to the Polaris Prize shortlist, and she is the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award.

Elder Colleen Sitting Eagle
Oki nistowaok Sipiyanatohkomia”ki.
Elder Colleen Sitting Eagle is the Siksika Language Instructor at Siksika Outreach School located in Siksika Nation since 2009.
Previously, Colleen worked as a researcher with Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park. She has worked with Siksika culture and heritage since 1992. Colleen learned her Siksika history from her late parents and the honour of working with knowledgeable elders.
She was one of the first groups from Siksika to be integrated to start her schooling in Strathmore, AB. She previously attended and continues to take courses from the University of Calgary. She is the proud mother of three children and eight grandchildren.
Past sessions
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Rehearsals for Living
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Dr. Robyn Maynard is an author and scholar based in Toronto, where she holds the position of Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto-Scarborough in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
2021/2022
Faith Matters: Why Engaging Religious Diversity Should be a Top Priority
Monday, March 21, 2022
Dr. Eboo Patel is a widely acclaimed civic leader who believes that religious diversity is an essential and inspiring dimension of democracy. Named “one of America’s best leaders” by US News and World Report, Dr. Patel is the Founder and President of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), the leading interfaith organization in the United States.
Decolonizing Disciplines and Structures of Inequality
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Dr. Gurminder K. Bhambra is a Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and President of the British Sociological Association (2022-25).
Dr. Yolande Bouka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and practitioner whose research and teaching focus on gender, violence, decoloniality, race and international relations, and African affairs.
Human Rights Day: Ableism, Disability Justice and Accessible Futures in Post-Secondary Education
Friday, December 10, 2021
Dr. Laverne Jacobs (she/her) is a full Professor of Law at the University of Windsor in Canada, and a person with physical disabilities.
Dr. Jay Dolmage is committed to disability rights in his scholarship, service, and teaching. His work brings together rhetoric, writing, disability studies, and critical pedagogy.
Anti-Racism and Decolonization in the University
Thursday, November 21, 2021
Dr. Verna St. Denis is a Professor of Education in the Department of Educational Foundations and Special Advisor to the President on Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression at the University of Saskatchewan.
Dr. Shirley Anne Tate is a Professor and Canada Research Chair Tier 1 in Feminism and Intersectionality in the Sociology Department, University of Alberta, Canada.
Decolonization: Rethinking the Coloniality of Power, Knowledge, and Being
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Dr. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is Professor and Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South with Emphasis on Africa at the University of Bayreuth, and a member of Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence.
Dr. Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez is Binizaá (Zapotec) from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico and Professor of Political Science at University of Alberta.
Decolonization, Disciplines, and Indigenous Knowledges in the University
Thursday, September 21, 2021
Dr. Marie Battiste holds the position of Professor Emerita at the University of Saskatchewan, and is Mi’kmaq from the Potlotek First Nation.
Dr. Catherine Odora Hoppers is a scholar and policy specialist on International Development, education, North-South questions, disarmament, peace, and human security.
2020/2021
Coloniality and Racial (In)Justice in the University
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Dr. Delia D. Douglas holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Dr. Enakshi Dua is a Professor and Graduate Director in Sexuality and Women’s Studies in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University.
Dr. annie ross is an Indigenous teacher and artist working within a community inside the Canadian west.
Dr. Sunera Thobani is a Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia.
What, You’re Calling "Me" A Racist?
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Dr. Fiona Nicoll is a professor in the Faculty of Arts (Political Science) at the University of Alberta. She is also a founding member of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association and edited its inaugural issue in 2005.
Dr. Sarita Srivastava is Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, OCAD University. In her previous position as Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Gender Studies, Queen’s University, she developed graduate seminars in Transnational Theories of Race, Gender and Sexuality and undergraduate seminars such as race, sex and the body, and race gender and nation, and taught a Social Justice Practicum for many years.
The Racist Violence of “Not Racism” and The Role of “Contrarian” Academics
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Dr. Alana Lentin is an Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University. She is a European Jewish woman who is a settler on Gadigal land (Sydney, Australia).
Complaint, Diversity, and Other Hostile Environments
Friday, March 20, 2020
Sara Ahmed is a feminist of colour scholar and writer. Her work addresses how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures.