Sefanit Habtom is one of three Pre-Doctoral Fellows in Black Studies, the first fellowship students of this new and growing program. She comes to Queen’s from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, where she completed her Master of Education and is currently a PhD Candidate, both in the Department of Social Justice Education. She is the recipient of the 2021-2022 Doctoral Completion Award at OISE, and the 2021-2022 Doctoral Fellowship in Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity at New College, University of Toronto.
Sefanit’s dissertation is tentatively titled Black Student Organizing on Indigenous Lands, and seeks to examine Black student organizing, paying particular attention to how their organizing is shaped by their relationships to and theorizations of the land Black students are situated upon. Her work draws from the interviews and focus groups she conducted with 30 Black student organizers in post-secondary institutions across Canada and the United States. About the interview process, she says, “These set of conversations have been meaningful and reveal all the tension, hope, complexity, and care that goes into organizing work.” She aims to share her research back to the community of student organizers she draws from, in creative, visual ways that are useful to their organizing work. She will work to complete her dissertation while at Queen’s.
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