��ǰ���Molade Osibodu, creating what she calls “liberatory futures” begins in the mathematics classroom.

An associate professor of math education at �첥��Ƶ’s Faculty of Education, Osibodu focuses her research on how Black students experience math and how education systems can better support equity.

“I want Black learners who enter a mathematics classroom to be fully, completely themselves instead of feeling like they don’t belong,” says Osibodu, who is keenly aware of the persistent and unfounded stereotypes about Black learners’ abilities in math – and how those beliefs intersect with Canada’s colonial legacy and history of immigration.

Osibodu’s teaching experience across three continents has fuelled her interest in and passion for addressing challenges faced by Black students in Canada. Before joining York, she taught secondary school mathematics in South Africa and later taught mathematics and mathematics education courses in the U.S. and Canada. Her research has since documented a range of obstacles faced by Black students in Canadian classrooms.

“It’s impossible to look at course syllabi without realizing that it’s important for equity to be at the core of the teaching practice,” she says. “My ultimate goal is to create math education where Black learners are thriving.”

A key aspect of her work is understanding how Black students experience math, which, in Canada, requires knowledge of the population’s demography. As her colleague Carl James, the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora at �첥��Ƶ, has long emphasized, the Canadian Black community is diverse – including descendants who arrived via the Underground Railroad, families who immigrated from the Caribbean decades ago and more recent immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa – leading to a variety of educational experiences.

Read the full article in the April 10, 2026 issue of Yfile

With files from Elaine Smith

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A new study led by Natalia Balyasnikova, associate professor in the Faculty of Education at �첥��Ƶ, is calling for a shift in how healthy aging is understood globally.

Published in the , the study responds to the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing, an international framework aimed at improving the lives of older adults through age-friendly environments, better care systems and efforts to combat ageism. While these priorities are important, Balyasnikova and her co-authors – all co-conveners of the Educational Gerontology Special Interest Group at the British Society of Gerontology – felt it reflected a recurring gap

“Across global health and aging policy frameworks, learning is largely absent or treated as peripheral,” she says. “We wanted to examine this omission more systematically and, importantly, to offer examples that demonstrate how participation in learning environments contributes to healthy aging and well-being.”

To do so, the researchers turned to three real-world learning initiatives in Canada and the U.K. – projects they helped design, lead or facilitate. This first-hand involvement allowed them to analyze participant experiences in depth, rather than observe programs from a distance.

In Canada, older immigrants participated in the Seniors Storytelling Club, a 10‑session, arts-based language-learning program where learners created oral, written and multimodal stories while building community with peers. In the U.K., the team examined two initiatives: a one-day intergenerational co-creation workshop that used movement, drawing and collaborative activities to explore sustainability; and the Ageing Well Public Talks, an ongoing public education series launched in 2019 that has reached more than 90,000 participants worldwide.

Read the full article in the March 20, 2026 issue of Yfile

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The rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian racism is playing out in Ontario schools, widely influenced by broader geopolitical and social issues.

Although , schools are  .

While we acknowledge that  and intersect to produce racial discrimination and violence, such as surveillance and censorship.

We recently engaged in  with people who are studying and practising to become teachers (pre-service teachers). We were interested in how prepared they are to challenge anti-Muslim bias and anti-Palestinian racism in Ontario schools.

We did this through interviews with 32 teacher candidates across Ontario. We focused on pre-service teacher perspectives so we could gauge current issues and gaps in teacher education programs.

The findings of our study, which documented gendered Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism in Ontario schools, points to the need for systemic changes in the province’s schools to better reflect the cultural and religious diversity in these spaces.

Read the full story in T.

Article co-authored by Faculty of Education Assistant Professor

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(Published on The Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research Blog, July 8th, 2025)

Following the sixth annual Critical Perspective for Global Health Research (CPGH) workshop in April, the CPGH Steering Committee is delighted to announce that the following York researchers have been awarded this year’s $7,000 seed grants to initiate novel and innovative ideas that take a critical social science approach to global health research:

Rachel Silver

Reconfigurations and Refusals: Forging Futures Beyond Aid in Malawi

In March 2025, President Trump shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), cutting more than $40 billions of dollars of promised funding. In Malawi, the U.S. alone contributed over 13% of the country’s overall 2024/2025 budget. While aid can meaningfully impact lives, the global aid architecture—the organizations, funding mechanisms, policies, and programs that scaffold development activities worldwide—is deeply flawed, often reproducing power hierarchies rooted in colonial histories and relationships. This pilot study conducted by a transnational research team (1) considers if and how aid cuts might catalyze decolonization of Malawi’s education and health sectors and (2) begins to reimagine possibilities for humanitarian engagement. Our project centers how local development workers theorize alternative arrangements for education within highly inequitable systems. Situated between international funders and community-based recipients, Malawian policymakers, NGO staff-members, and fieldworkers are uniquely positioned to reconceptualize aid mechanisms and forge new resourcing futures. 

Fawzia Gibson-Fall

Researching the Role of Security Actors in Global Health

This project examines the expanding role of security actors in global health at a time of intensifying global crises and shrinking aid budgets. Using qualitative methods such as interviews, archival and media analysis, the study explores the historical, everyday, and geopolitical dimensions of this engagement. It offers timely insights into the health-security nexus and informs future global health governance. The programme of work includes a field visit to Senegal and four in-person workshops: a policy workshop at the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, three research expansion meetings in Canada and the United Kingdom, linking colleagues at King’s College London and �첥��Ƶ. These activities are designed to co-develop policy tools, build networks, and advance this research agenda. Key outputs include visual material for an upcoming scholarly book, Health Warriors: The Global Politics of Military Health in Africa (Johns Hopkins University Press), peer-reviewed articles, and the development of international grant proposals.

The purpose of the CPGH Seed Grants is to support �첥��Ƶ–based critical social science perspectives in global health research that contribute to the research themes of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research: planetary health; global health and humanitarianism; and global health foresighting. The Seed Grants are also meant to encourage faculty to develop fuller grant proposals for Fall Tri-Council and other grant deadlines. Recipients will present the progress of their research at next year’s Critical Social Science Perspectives in Global Health Research Workshop. 

The Dahdaleh Institute and the CPGH Steering Committee would like to thank all the applicants this year and congratulate the 2025 CPGH Seed Grant recipients. 

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In a new article published in the Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, Faculty of Education Professor Dr. Molade Osibodu explores how mathematics classrooms continue to marginalize Black students in Ontario.

Titled “What’s Black Got to Do with It?”, the study investigates the experiences of eight Black secondary students in the Greater Toronto Area, uncovering how math spaces remain shaped by antiblackness, despite recent policy changes like the 2020–2021 move to destream Grade 9 math. Students described having to constantly prove their intelligence, encountering racialized assumptions about ability, rarely seeing Black math teachers, and facing silence around social issues in class.

Dr. Osibodu’s work offers critical insight into the structural barriers Black learners face and points toward more inclusive, responsive teaching practices in mathematics education.

Read the full article here:

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The videos visually represent the Faculty’s commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonization. They reflect the positive change which the Faculty helps drive, and experiences in return, by working with its various stakeholders including students, alumni, community partners, donors, faculty and staff.

Also highlighted is the Faculty’s new Five-Year Strategic Plan (2023-2027) which launched earlier this year. In helping to sharpen the Faculty’s focus, the team continues to deeply consider and respond to the way in which inequities play out in the 2020’s. Its reputation for sustained engagement and action plays a key role in society.

“The diversity and range of research in the Faculty addresses many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in how we think about all societal challenges as connected to our environments. Our work has international impact.” - Dean Robert Savage

The unveiling of the new videos marks a significant time for the Faculty as it celebrates its 50th Anniversary Year this June.

Meaningful education is ever-changing, engaging as it does, as it must, with society. As a Faculty we are thinking holistically about this dynamism across all of the ideas, innovations, partnerships, sectors, and fields with whom we engage, to continue to provide transformative research teaching and experiential learning experiences and environments for all our diverse students as they go on to become future leaders in all our communities. - Dean Robert Savage

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Celia Haig-Brown’s book Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School was one of the first texts to describe the experiences of residential school survivors from their perspectives, particularly those who had been forced to attend the .

It was published in 1988. Since then, many more books have been published by Indigenous writers, academics and survivors detailing those experiences.  have written hundreds of stories. And the was created, releasing reports and sharing survivors’ experiences. 

But when Haig-Brown set out to write her book more than three decades ago, there was very little to compare it with — and that presented its own challenges, including pushback from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers, because the legacy of residential schools had barely been questioned outside of Indigenous communities up to that point. 

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Appointed for one year, each of the recipients will work to enhance collegial capacity at an institutional level to advance the priorities of the University Academic Plan (UAP) in demonstrable ways. The Provostial Fellowships also provide an opportunity for a diverse group of tenured faculty to gain hands-on experience in university leadership.

“I am thrilled to have these four faculty members dedicating some of their time and energy to help lead the implementation of our UAP. The University will benefit from their expertise and ideas, and I hope they too will find this a valuable opportunity to grow and develop as leaders and institution builders,” said Provost and Vice-President Academic Lisa Philipps. “The launch of Building a Better Future: �첥��Ƶ Academic Plan 2020-2025 established six exciting and important priorities for �첥��Ƶ. As a community, we now look to work together in advancing these.”

Fellows will work with the provost and relevant members of the senior leadership on a project or initiative intended to advance one of the UAP priority areas at an institutional level. Each project also seeks to enhance and intersect with the University-wide challenge to elevate institutional contributions to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Qiang Zha
Associate Professor
Faculty of Education

Professor Zha’s project, “Reimagining and Transforming Liberal Arts Education with a Trans-Continental Partnership,” looks to explore a new model for practising liberal arts education in the current contexts of mass higher education, knowledge societies and globalization, including the prospects for infusing the concepts derived from the SDGs and promoting global competence.

Burkard Eberlein
Professor, Public Policy and Strategic Management
Schulich School of Business

Professor Eberlein’s project, “York’s Journey toward Carbon Neutrality,” seeks to identify and advance specific and impactful initiatives that the University can take to reduce its carbon emissions.

Sapna Sharma
Associate Professor, Department of Biology
Faculty of Science

Professor Sharma’s project, “Working Towards Equitable Access to Clean Water,” looks to address the billions of people worldwide, including in Canada, who do not have access to clean freshwater. This project will seek student, faculty and staff collaborations across the University with a goal of raising awareness and identifying solutions to this critical issue, and will culminate with an event celebrating .

Cheryl van Daalen-Smith
Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Faculty of Health
Associate Professor, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies/Children, Childhood & Youth Studies Program.
Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies

Professor van Daalen-Smith’s project, “More than Bees and Trees: Seeing the SDGs in our Curriculum – A Pan-University Community Development Initiative,” seeks to track, weave, inspire and amplify curricular SDG initiatives and advance �첥��Ƶ’s commitment to interdisciplinarity.

Article originally published in the September 20, 2021 issue of .

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Emma Sabzalieva, a research associate in the Faculty of Education, has been awarded the 2021 Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) Eurasia Special Interest Group Dissertation Award for her thesis ‘Responding to major institutional change: The fall of the Soviet Union and higher education in Central Asia’.

The Eurasia Special Interest Group Dissertation Award aims to honor the best dissertation or thesis written by scholars working and studying in the Eurasia region. The evaluation criteria include originality of research, appropriate use of scholarly literature, and quality of writing.

In her thesis, Sabzalieva examines how higher education responds to major political, economic and social change. Based on a comparative case study of the responses of higher education institutions and systems in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the thesis finds a considerable array of responses by higher education to major change, from radical reform to remarkable durability. The discovery of variation is an important theoretical finding that serves to highlight the importance of comparative work. It is also significant because of what these divergences tell us about pre- and post-1991 schemas for higher education, about the similarities and differences between the three cases, and about the perceived value and purpose of higher education across settings.

“I have been a member of CIES since starting my doctoral work and consider the Eurasia SIG one of my academic families. The annual conference has always been a fantastic way to learn about others’ work, to meet up with global ‘relatives’, and to make new connections,” said Sabzalieva. “Because it’s such a large conference, there are plenty of opportunities for the serendipity moment of stumbling onto new (for me) research/knowledge areas. Within that bigger network, I have greatly benefited from being a member of the smaller Eurasia SIG and really enjoy getting to know other people who share my passion for higher education and for the Eurasia/Central Asia region.”

“Emma’s work is always brilliant because it explores new boundaries and new frames to understand the role and purpose of higher education within and across different states. Emma is an outstanding scholar,” said associate professor Roopa Desai Trilokekar. “Her research excellence and potential has been recognized through prestigious scholarships and awards such as a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (the first recipient in her department since 2012); Leverhulme Trust �첥��Ƶ Abroad Studentship (15% acceptance rate); the UK Society for Research into Higher Education’s Newer Researchers' Prize (2020) and the Excellent Paper Award for an Emerging Scholar from the Knowledge Politics and Policies Standing Group of the ECPR (2018). As two comparative and international educationalists we share many common interests and I am thrilled to have Emma work with me as a Research Associate on several projects including on our mutual research interest in the new geopolitics of international education.”

The ( brings together educational researchers and practitioners working on or in Eurasia and is part of the (CIES). CIES is the largest and oldest of 47 comparative and international education societies around the world and has over 3,000 individual members.

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A number of our faculty and staff will be presenting at AERA’s 2021 virtual annual meeting, April 8 – 12, 2021.

THURSDAY APRIL 8, 2021

Unpacking Early Childhood Education With a Critical Lens
3:00 to 4:00pm EDT
Childhood Innocence and Experience: Memory, Discourse, Practice
Lisa Farley

Exploring the Experiences of Black School Leaders and Their Work
3:00 to 4:00pm EDT
Im/possibilities of Antiracist Leadership: Black and Brown Leaders in White Spaces
Vidya Shah and Nada Aoudeh

FRIDAY APRIL 9, 2021

Future Teachers Reimagining the Possibilities of Curriculum and Pedagogy
9:30 to 10:30am
The Dreamwork of Childhood Memory: The Futures Teachers Make From the Schooling Past (Roundtable Session)
Lisa Farley

Facilitating Education Change Through Various Perspectives
9:30 to 10:30am EDT
Growing Innovation in Rural Sites of Learning: The Role of Professional Learning Networks in Educational Change
Graham Giles (Roundtable)

SATURDAY APRIL 10, 2021

Accepting the Responsibility to Examine and Innovate With Frameworks Used in Education Research
10:40am to 12:10pm EDT
Molade Osibodu (Chair)

Explorations of Past and Future: Narrative Spaces of Teaching and Learning
2:30 to 4:00pm EDT
Making Space for Democratic Dissensus: Futures Curricula and Speculative World-Building in Education
Brittany Tomin

District-Level Reforms for Equity: Politics and Implementation Challenges
2:30 to 4:00pm EDT
Subverting Whiteness: Beliefs, Knowledges, and Competencies of Midlevel, Antiracist District Leaders
Vidya Shah and Nada Aoudeh

Education at the Borders: Rights, Refugees, and Responsibilities
4:10 to 5:40pm EDT
The Rights and Personhood of Other People's Children (Paper)
Aparna Mishra Tarc

The University, Teacher Education, and Bearing Witness at the Border When Political Institutions Fail
Mario DiPaolantonio

SUNDAY APRIL 11, 2021

Reading Critical Pedagogies, Reading Paulo Freire
2:30 to 4:00pm EDT
A Note on Free Association as Transference to Reading
Deborah Britzman

MONDAY APRIL 12, 2021

Accepting Responsibility for (In)Equity in Education? Critical Policy Analysis Across Contexts
9:30 to 11:00am EDT
Shifting Meanings: The Struggle Over Private Funding of Public Schools in Alberta, Canada
Sue Winton

Examining Black Girls' Educational Experiences Across Three Differing Contexts
9:30 to 11:00am EDT
Africa, Our Motherland; Mathematics Classrooms, Our Oppressive Space
Molade Osibodu

Science Teaching and Learning: Socioscientific Issues (SSIs)
11:10am to 12:40pm EDT
New Materialisms in High School Science
Darren Hoeg

Poster Session
11:10am to 12:10pm EDT
Instructors' Beliefs, Attitudes, and Practices in Blended Courses
Ron Owston and Taru Malhotra

Visit the for further information and to view the full program.

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