“Black Histories and Futures of Science and Technology”

Shannon Lecture Series Overview, Fall 2024/Winter 2025

Description: In partnership with Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, this year’s edition of the Shannon Lecture Series is titled “Black Histories and Futures of Science and Technology.” The series offers critical insight into anti-Black racisms’ relationship with technology and how technology enables/d Black resistance, community building and liberation. Across a range of disciplines speakers will think expansively about definitions of science and technology and the Black histories, presents, and futures of transportation, agriculture, technology, sports and science, and press and periodicals.

Session 3: December 9, 7pm – Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre
Title: Em(Body)ing Paradoxes: The Enduring Power of Pseudo-Science and the Myth of the “Natural Black Athlete”

Speaker Biography: Born in Kigali, Rwanda, Dr. Ornella Nzindukiyimana (pronounced nzee-ndoo-key-yee-mah-nah) arrived in Ottawa, Canada at twelve years old. An avid soccer fan, she went on to pursue a Human Kinetics degree at the University of Ottawa (2011). In the last senior BSc year, she developed an interest in research after completing an honours project on Ottawa’s public baths in the early 20th century. The rest was history—sport history. She went on to complete an MA at Ottawa in 2013 (on Black Canadian history of swimming) and then a PhD at Western University in London, ON in 2018 (on Black women’s sport history in Ontario). Her work has appeared in forums such as Sport History Review, Loisir et Société /Society & Leisure, the Journal of Canadian Studies, and The International Journal of the History of Sport, and she has presented at multiple national and international conferences. She currently teaches sport history and sociology courses.

RSVP FOR SESSION 3

About the Shannons: The Shannon Lectures in History are a series of thematically linked public lectures offered at Carleton University each autumn and made possible through the Shannon Donation, a major gift from a long-time friend of the Department of History. The Shannon Funds were donated by Lois M. Long in memory of her parents James Buchanan Long and Ida May (Davidson).

2024 Convenor: Alexa Lepera, Assistant Curator, Domestic Environments and Social Diversity, Ingenium

Save future for your calendar – More details to be posted as they become available.

• Session 4: with Dorothy Williams, January 13, 7pm, Dominion-Chalmers Centre
  Title: Free Lance: The First Black Newspaper in Montreal