Temitope (Tope) Adefarakan
Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Canadian Studies Program and Transitional Year Program
Tope Adefarakan is an assistant professor, teaching stream in the Canadian Studies Program at University College and the Transitional Year Program, who teaches Black Canadian studies. She holds a PhD in sociology and equity studies from the University of Toronto.
Adefarakan’s current research interests include: Black Indigeneities, frameworks and ways of being as critical and decolonial sites of resistance and affirmation; Black feminisms, and 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 education and school boards, including an examination of the backlash against critical race theory, and how Black communities resist anti-Blackness.
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 Diaspora (Peter Lang, 2015), 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.”