��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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Interested in conducting research with schools/boards but unsure where to start or what they might expect of you? Your search is over! Come meet our expert researchers representing four Ontario school boards. They will discuss important aspects of building university/public education research relationships and strategies on how to sustain them. Lots of time for discussion so please bring your questions!

Session will be facilitated by professors James and Gillian Parekh.

Panelists:

������������DzԱ������is the Manager of Research and Strategic Analytics with the Durham District School Board and has a focus on making research meaningful, enlightening, and timely.

�ٲ��������������Ա���is the Executive Manager of Research and Organizational Transformation at the Waterloo Region District School Board where his primary responsibilities include board improvement and equity planning and research-informed decision-making.

�����������ʰ��������� is a senior researcher and co-chair of the external research review committee at the Toronto District School Board.

�Ѳ���������������ѳ����󾱲Ա�-�ϳܲ��� is the Research Manager at the York Catholic District School Board, with over 30 years of experience leading equity-focused research and data-driven system improvements.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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�첥��Ƶ Faculty of Education Professor Lisa Farley and her research colleagues have developed a reflection guide for museum educators to support their efforts to discuss challenging topics and ideas with children.

The guide builds on the team’s 2025 study of programming and practices at children’s museums in Canada and the United States.

Farley says museum educators are navigating increasingly constrained environments when addressing equity, diversity, accessibility and inclusion with young audiences. Often, the idea of “childhood innocence” is cited as a reason to censor or downplay controversial and challenging ideas.

At the same time, Farley says, "children live within the social and political world, and are themselves subjects of and/or witnesses to injustices, violences and inequities."

She adds that the question then becomes "not how to protect them from difficult knowledge, but what it can mean to facilitate meaningful engagements.”

Farley and her colleagues, including York’s Gillian Parekh, associate professor of education and doctoral candidate Suad Ahmed, conducted the original study in partnership with the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM). Their research found that while many children’s museums focus on exploration, play or self-expression, addressing social and historical issues with young audiences were secondary.

Read the full article in the Friday, March 27, 2026 issue of Yfile

Article written by Elaine Smith, special contributing writer

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Are you wondering why, as an academic, you would want to engage with media, particularly in the current moment of heightened threats to academic freedom and widespread disinformation?

This two-part interactive workshop, led by Michelle Stack and Jordan Michael Smith, explores why engaging with media matters for scholars and how it can help amplify the impact of their research beyond academia to shape public discourse and inform policy.

Part 1: Why Media Engagement Matters
Date: Tuesday, April 14^th, 2026, 10:00AM-12:00PM
Location: Zoom

This session explores how engaging with media can strengthen your knowledge mobilization and exchange efforts, while amplifying the impact of your research beyond the walls of academia. It examines how media engagement can strengthen the visibility, relevance, and real-world influence of your work and how journalists, researchers, and policymakers differ in their timelines, priorities, definition of what research is, and why understanding these differences matters when deciding whether and how to engage media, and ultimately how to utilize scholarship to help shape public policy. The session also covers practical strategies for crafting clear messages and pitching story ideas effectively and includes a panel discussion on the potential benefits and risks of different forms of media engagement.

Part 2: How Scholars Can Engage Media Effectively
Date: Monday, April 27^th, 2026, 10:00AM-2:30PM (Lunch will be served 12:00-1:00PM)
Location: 280 N York Lanes

This session focuses on how to create your own media by selecting formats and genres that best align with your goals. It features a presentation from York’s Media Relations & External Communications department on the support services available, along with a hands-on workshop where participants develop, review and refine their media pitches through small-group working sessions with guidance and feedback. The session also emphasizes building collective strategies and support networks for proactive media outreach and for responding effectively to potential backlash.

, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at UBC, will be leading both sessions. She has received recognition for her work in public engagement, including the UBC Public Humanities Hub Engagement Award, and has served as a UBC Knowledge Mobilization Scholar. Journalists frequently interview her, and she has previous experience as a communications director and policy consultant.

is a contributing editor at the New Republic. His writing has appeared in print and online for many publications, including the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Harper’s, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail. Toronto Star, and Maclean’s

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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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Panelists:

• Angele Alook, Associate Professor, School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies & Director, Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages
• Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education
• Jennifer Foster, Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change
• Carl James, Professor & Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community & Diaspora, Faculty of Education
• Byron Gray, Manager, TD Community Engagement Centre

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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Carl E. James, the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in �첥��Ƶ’s Faculty of Education, brings his expertise to a four-year Genome Canada research project focused on Canada’s Black population.

Genomic Evidence for Precision Medicine for Selected Chronic Diseases Among Black Peoples in Canada – developed through collaboration with the Centre for Applied Genomics, at SickKids Hospital and McGill Genome Centre – is an effort to sequence the genomes of 10,000 Black Canadians to ensure equitable health care for an often-understudied population.

By sequencing the nucleotides that make up the participants’ DNA and RNA, researchers will gain a better understanding of how diseases affect Canada’s Black population and develop better precision medicines to target their conditions.

“We need to encourage these approaches for research, since medical studies often miss the racial diversity of health care recipients,” says James, a renowned sociologist with a research focus on race and ethnic relations. “In fact, we need to understand differences in all populations.”

The study is led by four prominent medical researchers: Upton Allen, division head at SickKids Hospital’s Infectious Diseases and professor at the University of Toronto; Loydie Jerome-Majewska, McGill University Department of Pediatrics professor and co-founder/program lead for the Canadian Black Scientists’ Network (CSBN); Juliet Daniel, McMaster University cell biologist and cancer researcher; and OmiSoore Dryden, professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University.

Read the full article in the February 25, 2026 issue of Yfile

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A  led by �첥��Ƶ follows Class of '73 high school graduates over the span of five decades in The Story of a Generation, a book that offers powerful insights on the baby boomer generation.

Culminating in a new book titled , the research marks the longest-running Canadian generational study of its kind, following nearly 50 years in the lives of a cohort of high school students who graduated in 1973. 

The project originated with Paul Anisef, professor emeritus at York’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies who began with a survey of high school students to help the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities understand and project post-secondary enrolment.

“I didn’t have in my mind at all that this would become a long-standing longitudinal study,” says Anisef. “It started as a ministry-sponsored survey of high school students, and one thing led to another.” 

Encouraged by colleagues after the initial survey, Anisef returned repeatedly to the same group of students – just under 2,500 members of the class of 1973 – surveying and interviewing them in seven waves, from adolescence through midlife and into their early to mid-'60s. 

The final phase, conducted between 2019 and 2021, captured their reflections as many approached retirement, offering a rare, lifespan perspective on Canadians. 

The newly released book is co-authored along with York Faculty of Education professors Paul Axelrod and Carl James, as well as York PhD student Erika McDonald, and includes contributions from Wolfgang Lehmann, Karen Robson and Erica Fae Thomson. It’s a follow-up to an earlier volume, Opportunity and Uncertainty: Life Course Experiences of the Class of ’73 (2000). 

Read the full story in the January 16, 2026 issue of Yfile

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Two �첥��Ƶ community members – Professor Satinder Kaur Brar and Faculty of Education PhD candidate Anna Pearson – have been recognized with a 2024 Minister’s Award of Excellence from Ontario’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

The annual awards celebrate the work of faculty and staff at publicly assisted colleges and universities who are making a difference in students’ lives, in their communities and in the province. This year, there were more than 170 nominations and only six recipients selected, including professors, researchers and post-secondary leaders.

Brar, a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at York’s , received the award in the category of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The category recognizes faculty and staff who work with industry and business to drive economic development in Ontario.

A globally recognized leader in green technologies for removing contaminants from drinking water and wastewater, Brar was recognized for her pioneering research in enzyme-based environmental remediation. Working in collaboration with researchers at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique and engineering consulting firm TechnoRem Inc., Brar helped develop and implement a faster, more sustainable method for cleaning petroleum-contaminated sites using enzymes rather than traditional microorganisms. The method, which is 100 times faster and achieves an 80 per cent reduction in contaminants without toxic residues, is especially effective in cold northern climates where other microorganisms are less viable.

The approach has been supported by the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan and is already in use at several polluted sites across Canada, addressing surface water, groundwater and soil contamination. “Once it [the method for cleaning sites] gets into the field, that is where the real magic starts,” says Brar, noting how rewarding it is for her team to see their lab work result in real-world environmental improvements.

She describs receiving the award as a “fantastic surprise” and emphasizes the recognition is a shared achievement with her research team. “It’s a great boost for them to understand that whatever we do in the lab does see light of the day at some point,” she says.

Brar also highlights the importance of collaboration with stakeholders and industry. “This kind of recognition reinforces the belief that we can transition from lab to field,” she says, “and when we see the results in the field, it can have fantastic repercussions.”

Pearson, a PhD candidate at York, received the award in the category of Future-Proofing Ontario’s Students. The category highlights individuals whose work helps students build the skills and resilience needed for success in a rapidly evolving world.

Pearson, who has taught in both elementary and secondary settings across Ontario for nearly two decades, was recognized for her contributions to program design, policy leadership and community-based learning initiatives aimed at preparing teacher candidates to meet the demands of a changing educational landscape.

Reflecting on the award, she credits those who shaped her own academic path. “It means I've had some wonderful teachers in my life,” she says. “And it also means that now I'm giving my students the same kind of mentorship that I received.”

She also sees the recognition as an opportunity for thoughtful evaluation. “It means that I have an opportunity to see what's working and what's not,” she says. “And that's the hard part.”

Brar and Pearson’s achievements exemplify �첥��Ƶ’s commitment to excellence in teaching, innovation and societal impact.

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Edwards, an associate professor in California Polytechnic State University’s physics department, is on a Zoom call with CBC while sitting in a friend’s brightly lit shed near her home in Berkeley, Calif. 

Mulling the question, she turns her head to the right, facing white wood-panelled walls. She’s thinking hard.

“Ummm,” she says, looking off into the distance. “There are definitely a few new grad students that I know of.”

She pauses and smiles. “I know some physicists. And some education astronomy folks.”

It’s clear she’s struggling. 

“Yeah, there’s very few,” Edwards finally says. “I don’t know if there’s any other folks who are currently working not as students [but] as astronomers who are Canadian. I don’t know. I would imagine I would know them.”

Canada has some of the world’s most talented astronomers, astrophysicists and physicists. There’s , whose work on pulsars and neutron stars earned her the Gerhard Herzberg Canada gold medal for science and engineering; , a world-renowned astronomer and planetary scientist at MIT who earned a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2013 and is a leader in exoplanet research; and .

One thing they have in common? They’re all white.

Black astronomers are few and far between in North America, but especially in Canada. Inside the community, members share stories of discrimination, micro-aggressions and feelings of isolation, which can ultimately dissuade others from pursuing careers in the sciences.

High school challenges

Hewitt is active in bringing STEM to Black youth. He co-founded , a STEM outreach program in Nova Scotia for Black students. His programs include the , a summer camp at Dalhousie. 

Why are there so few Black Canadian scientists in general, but in particular, those who seek out a career in astronomical science? 

One of the problems may be found in the education system.

Take the province of Ontario, for example. Until recently, high schools there had a “streaming” program, which directed students into different post-secondary routes. “Academic” courses were more challenging and required for university; “applied” courses prepared students for college and trades; and “essentials” provided support for students in meeting the requirements to graduate.

In 2017, , a professor in the faculty of education at �첥��Ƶ in Toronto, found that only 53 per cent of Black students in the Toronto District School Board were put in academic programs, compared to 81 per cent of white students and 80 per cent of other racialized students. 

Conversely, 39 per cent of Black students were enrolled in applied programs, compared to 16 per cent of white students and 18 per cent of other racialized students.

“What we found in that study was many of the [Black] parents were talking about how their children were streamed into vocational or essential or low-level courses,” James said. Some parents would try to “intervene,” he said, but their concerns fell on deaf ears.

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