Afua Cooper, Dalhousie University
African Canadian history, Atlantic slavery, Black orature

Dr. Afua Cooper is the 3^rd James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian studies at Dalhousie University. She holds a Ph.D. in Black Canadian history from the University of Toronto. A multidisciplinary scholar and artist, her expertise includes African Canadian history, Atlantic slavery, abolition, and freedom, gender, Black orature, education, and Black agency and political consciousness. She has conducted research on Black life and culture all across Canada, and internationally. Her co-authored publication We’re Rooted Here and they Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History won the Joseph Brant prize for the best history book. Her ground-breaking book on Canadian slavery, The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montreal was nominated for the Governor General’s award. She also received the Harry Jerome Award for Professional excellence, and was featured on SSHRC’s website for her work on African Canadian history.          

At Dalhousie, Dr. Cooper established the Black Canadian and African Diaspora studies minor, the first of its kind in Canada. She also founded the Black Canadian Studies Association, a network of Black studies scholar. Over the years, the BCSA has held three successful biennial conferences, and two workshops.  

Afua is also an accomplished poet and novelist. She has published five books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed Copper Woman and Other Poems, and two historical novels. Her creative work has been recognized with national and international awards.

Fluency: English 

Barrington Walker, Wilfrid Laurier University
Modern Canadian, Black Canadian, Race, Immigration, Law

Barrington Walker  is an historian of Modern Canada who focuses on the histories of Blacks, race immigration and the law.  His work seeks to illuminate the contours of Canadian modernity by exploring Canada's emergence as racial state through its histories of white supremacy, slavery, colonization/immigration, segregation and Jim Crowism. Much of his work considers how these practices were legitimized, and in some instances contested, by the rule of law and legal institutions.

Fluency: English