About the Speakers

Funké Aladejebi is a scholar of the twentieth century with a specialization in Black Canadian history. Her recently published book, Schooling the System: A History of Black Women Teachers, explores the intersections of race, gender and access in Canadian educational institutions. She is also the co-editor of Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History. Her work explores the importance of Black Canadian women in sustaining their communities and preserving a distinct Black identity within restrictive gender and racial barriers. Dr. Aladejebi has been involved in a variety of community engagement and social justice initiatives in Toronto and her research interests are in oral history, the history of education in Canada, Black feminist thought and transnationalism.

Funké Aladejebi, Panelist

Claudine Bonner, Panelist and Co-Investigator

Dr. Claudine Bonner is a scholar of the 20th century with a specialization in Black Canadian history. Her research and teaching interests focus on African Diaspora (im)migration and settlement in the Atlantic world, Black Canadian labour history, and diversity and equity in education. She is the inaugural Vice-Provost, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and professor of Race & Ethnicity and Women’s & Gender Studies at Acadia University. Claudine recently completed a residency at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN as a Fulbright Canada Research Chair, and is currently a Visiting Scholar with the Gorsebrook Research Institute (GRI) for Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary’s University (SMU). Her current project explores early 20th-century Black Canadian Maritime migration to the Boston States. She has given invited talks and public lectures on a number of topics related to African diaspora migration.

She is currently editing, with Drs. Nina Reid-Maroney and Boulou Ebanda de B’béri, a collection of essays titled The Black Press: A Shadowed Canadian Tradition. This collection, spanning the period from the 1850s to the early twentieth century, is the first in the field to bring together original historical and Communication Studies research that position pioneering Canadian Black journalists as effective intellectual activists.

Dr. Boulou Ebanda de B’béri (PI The Black Press in Canada) is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa, and the lead investigator on “The Black Press in Canada” (SSHRC Insight, 2016-2021) and the “Promised Land’ Project” (SSHRC Community University Research Alliance 2007- 2012). Among his many publications in the field of Black Canadian Studies are three co-edited volumes: The Promised Land: History and Historiography of Black Experience in Chatham and the Dawn Settlement (with Handel Kashope Wright and Nina Reid-Maroney), short-listed for the Ontario Speaker’s Book Award in 2014; Women in the “Promised Land”: New Essays in African Canadian History (with Nina Reid-Maroney and Wanda Thomas Bernard), and the forthcoming The Black Press: A Shadowed Canadian Tradition. He is the founding director of the Audiovisual Media Lab for the studies of Cultures and Societies and was appointed as the University of Ottawa’s Special Advisor on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence in 2020.

Boulou Ebanda de B’béri, Panelist and Principal Investigator

Deirdre McCorkindale, Panelist

Deirdre McCorkindale is a historian interested in the history of Race in North America with a focus on the African Canadian and African American Experience. Her current research currently concerns the history of intelligence testing in North America focusing on a racial intelligence study performed in southwestern Ontario in the 1930s. Deirdre has appeared in several documentaries talking about the Black history of Ontario specifically the Chatham Kent region and is a proud member and consultant for the Chatham Kent Black historical society.

Irene Moore Davis is an educator, historian, writer, podcaster, and activist who speaks and writes frequently about equity, diversity, inclusion, and African Canadian history. She fulfills community roles including President of the Essex County Black Historical Research Society, Programming Chair at BookFest Windsor, co-host of the All Write in Sin City podcast, Co-Host of Talkin’ Real Melanin, member of the Dismantling Racism Task Force of the Anglican Church of Canada, and member of the University of Windsor Board of Governors. Irene’s publications have included poetry, history, and journalism. Her documentary producer credits have included the award-winning The North Was Our Canaan (2020) and Across the River to Freedom (currently in post-production.) 

Irene is a graduate of the University of Windsor, Western University, and Queen’s University, and has recently retired from her role as an administrator at St. Clair College, where she continues to teach courses in equity, diversity, and inclusion, Underground Railroad history, and Black cultural studies. Irene was the recipient of the 2022 Harriet Tubman Award for Commitment to a Purpose from the Ontario Black History Society and has recently been named to the 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women. She resides in Windsor, Ontario with her husband, Rodney Davis.

Irene Moore Davis, Keynote

Kristin Moriah, Keynote Speaker

Kristin Moriah is an Assistant Professor of English at Queen’s University and a 2022 Visiting Fellow at the Pennsylvania State University Center for Black Digital Research and the Pennsylvania State Humanities Institute. Her research interests include Sound Studies and black feminist performance, particularly the circulation of African American performance within the black diaspora and its influence on the formation of national identity. She is the editor of “Mary Ann Shadd Cary in the Here and Now,” a forthcoming first edited collection of scholarly essays about Mary Ann Shadd Cary.

Ornella Nzindukiyimana, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Human Kinetics at St. Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia, on the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People). Her main area of research is the socio-historical study of Black people in 20th century Canadian sport, with a focus on how immigration, nationalism, and the intersection of race and gender shaped Black Canadians’ practices and experiences. Her work has appeared in forums such as Sport History Review, Journal of Canadian Studies, Society & Leisure, and The International Journal of the History of Sport.

Ornella Nzindukiyimand, Panelist

Nina Reid-Maroney, Panelist and Co-Investigator

Dr. Nina Reid-Maroney is a Professor of History, Huron University College, where she teaches American history and co-directs the Huron Community History Centre. Her current research is focused on intellectual and religious histories of abolitionist communities in the Great Lakes region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She published The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 1868-1967 with University of Rochester Press in 2013. As co-investigator on “The Black Press in Canada” and on the “’Promised Land’ Project”, she has published several articles and book chapters in the field of antislavery history, and has co-edited three books: The Promised Land: History and Historiography of the Black Experience in Chatham-Kent’s Settlements and Beyond (with Handel KAshope Wright and Boulou Ebanda de B’béri); Women in the “Promised Land”: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History (with Wanda Thomas Bernard and Boulou Ebanda de B’béri), and, with Claudine Bonner and Boulou Ebanda de B’béri, the forthcoming The Black Press: A Shadowed Canadian Tradition.

Heather Rennalls moved to Woodstock, Ontario 30 years ago, to pursue her Social Work career. She was both surprised and intrigued with the rich Black history in Oxford County. Since 2000, Heather has combined her two passions, researching and writing, to write numerous articles on Black history. Over the years her articles have appeared in two newspapers and the three magazines in Woodstock. Since 2005 Heather has conducted presentations with  her exhibit “Almost Forgotten: Black History in Oxford County” to help educate both students and the public on the local Black History that has almost been forgotten. In 2014, Heather launched her website and blog at heathershistoricals.weebly.com. A wealth of resources and various events happening in and around Oxford County.

Heather sat on the Southwestern Ontario’s Black History Committee, which launched the virtual on-line Black history tour app on February 1, 2022: https://onthisspot.ca/cities/oxfordcounty. For Black History Month in February 2022, Heather appeared twice on the CBC radio show Afternoon Drive with Chris dela Torre; on three episodes of What’s Up London television show and her presentation The History of the Underground Railroad, was aired on Rogers TV. She was also interviewed by Global News.

Heather Rennalls, Panelist

Scott Schofield, Panelist

Scott Schofield is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at Huron University College. His research focuses heavily on topics in Book History, particularly how books are printed, read and collected, and his publications include work on private libraries, twentieth-century collectors, early note-taking practices and the digital book. His recent work includes an in-progress, detailed digital database of works on nineteenth-century anti-slavery in Western University’s Special Collections and a forthcoming publication, with Nina Reid Maroney and Neil Brooks, entitled “The Black Press and The Voice of the Bondsman” for The Black Press: A Shadowed Canadian Tradition.