Dr. Tope Adefarakan is Assistant Professor of Black Canadian Studies, Teaching Stream at University College of the University of Toronto. She holds a Ph.D. from the Collaborative Doctoral Program in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.
Her current research interests include African Indigenous frameworks of knowledge and practice, critical pedagogy and scholarship of teaching and learning; Indigenizing intersectionality to counter the erasure of femicide against Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people in Canada and the U.S.; Indigenizing dis/ability to refute deficit-based constructions of ability through African Indigenous spiritualities and ways of knowing and being; critical interrogations of how anti-Black racism manifests in school boards, including an examination of the backlash against critical race theory, and how Black communities resist anti-Blackness. Dr. Adefarakan’s publications include her research on Indigeneity and Black Canadian Studies, titled, The Souls of Yoruba Folk: Indigeneity, race and Critical Spiritual Literacy in the African Disapora, and a contributing chapter in Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization, titled, “Integrating Body, Mind, and Spirit Through the Yoruba Concept of Ori: Critical Contributions to a Decolonizing Pedagogy.
Dr. Adefarakan is also Founder and Principal Consultant of Dr. Tope Anti-Racism and EDI Consulting Firm, providing services to make organizations equitable, anti-racist and inclusive places to work.