Carleton’s Institute of African Studies has recently welcomed its second full-faculty member and Canada 150 Research Chair, Shireen Hassim.
Hassim is one of the 24 research chairs in the program, over half of whom are women.
She received her post-doctorate degree from York University and was a visiting professor at Harvard University in 2017.
The Canada 150 Research Chair program is the result of a $117.6-million-dollar investment by the federal government into research and aims to attract researchers and scholars from all over the world to Canada.
“The Canada 150 Research Chair position is a very prestigious and very competitive program,” Pius Adesanmi, director of the Institute of African Studies, said.
For the next seven years, Hassim will serve as a research chair in African studies and gender politics, something she said is often overlooked and unexplored within the academic sphere. She is currently teaching a class called “African Feminisms,” one she said she hopes will highlight the complexities and misconceptions of Africa in relation to feminism.
“[People] think of Africa as a homogeneous entity, which it’s not,” she said.
“They don’t think of Africa as a place from which theory emerges, or from which there’s any new contributions to scholarship,” Hassim added. “They also think of African women as particularly downtrodden, or as the space of hyper-patriarchy.”
Through teaching the course, Hassim said she hopes to introduce students to a different perspective—one that is not always explored in many institutions.
“The course is a way of introducing people to a different set of ideas, tracing some of the ideas of women’s own resistance to forms of patriarchy that go back a long way, and to show that feminism isn’t something new in Africa,” she said.
“There are many tensions inside Africa; there are many differences; there are many different religions. There are many different ways in which those religions shape the position of women and queer people—it’s not a flat, simple story,” she said.
As research chair, Hassim is planning extensive research projects that will involve and collaborate with colleagues within the institute.
“I hold the Canada 150 Chair, but I think of it as something that is about the collective efforts of the Institute of African Studies, and so, hopefully that will help the institute to build on its larger goal,” Hassim said.
The program hopes to continue to grow and be a central point of African studies in Canada, and to “expand the understanding of Africa in scholarship and in public policy,” she said.
“I hope the chair will contribute to that,”
Nduka Otiono, a Carleton assistant professor of African studies, said the institute being located in Ottawa allows it to serve as a hub for the study of Africa.
“Carleton is located in Ottawa, which is the federal capital, and there are lots of African centres and institutions in Ottawa here including the embassies or the high commissions,” he said. “Having the institute provides opportunity to serve as a hub for the study of Africa not only at Carleton, but in Canada as a whole.”
“It is perhaps the only full-fledged standalone institute on African studies in the country, so that gives us opportunity to play a pivotal role in the study of Africa in Canada,” he added.
Looking forward, Hassim said that as an academic, she hopes to continue her research and publishing in her field, and “hopefully bringing some of those astute, smart African theorists to Ottawa and into Carleton to do public talks and to do research seminars.”
Hassim said she also wishes to excite and encourage graduate students to do more research and field work in Africa.
“I hope to be that conduit, together with my colleagues, in breaking down those barriers and getting people to do field work in Africa and taking them there.”
Adesanmi says he is looking forward to Hassim’s contributions to the school, including her “increased visibility in the field and knowledge of politics and gender studies.” θ
Photo by Lauren Hicks
