Waterloo Launches PAIR
Black-Led, Inclusive, and Globally Engaged
The University of Waterloo launches the Pan-African Initiative for Research (PAIR), a new interdisciplinary research initiative designed to advance collaborative, community rooted, and globally engaged scholarship across Pan-African contexts, including Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Afro-diasporic communities worldwide.
PAIR is Black-led by design, grounded in African and Afro-diasporic intellectual traditions and shaped by scholars with deep disciplinary expertise and lived connection to the regions and communities engaged in the research. At the same time, the initiative is intentionally inclusive. PAIR welcomes researchers of all backgrounds whose work is focused on Pan-African contexts, particularly those conducting research on the African continent and across diasporic regions. This approach reflects PAIR’s commitment to collaboration, reciprocity, and rigorous scholarship rather than exclusivity.
At a recent fireside chat at the Laterna Black Innovation Hub’s Black Regional Innovation Dialogue & Growth Exchange (BRIDGE) event, PAIR researchers highlighted PAIR’s emphasis on research conducted with communities and partners, and its role in fostering dialogue across institutional and geographic boundaries.
“PAIR was created to bring scholars together and connect research across communities and across continents. Success, for me, looks like this: people working with each other, knowledge moving beyond institutions, and partnerships that create real impact.”
Today, the core team includes scholars from every faculty at Waterloo and are engaged in research connected to PAIR.
In the Faculty of Environment, Dr. Helena Shilomboleni is working directly with local farming communities and scholars in West Africa to examine food systems, land use, and climate resilience. Her work integrates local knowledge with environmental research, supporting locally grounded responses to climate and agricultural challenges.
In Engineering, Dr. Yverick Pascal Rangom is collaborating with the University of Nigeria Nsukka to advance research on electric vehicle battery technologies. Through this partnership, doctoral researchers can continue their studies at Waterloo while remaining connected to research ecosystems in Nigeria, strengthening global collaboration in sustainable energy and transportation.
These projects are just a few examples of the scholarship taking place through PAIR. Across the initiative, researchers are advancing work in public health and health systems, climate resilient agriculture and environmental governance, advanced materials and energy technologies, microbiology and circular bioeconomy, mathematics and STEM education, creative and cultural research, language and knowledge mobilization, and critical historical and theoretical studies of race, migration, and power, often in close partnership with communities and global collaborators.
By being Black-led while remaining inclusive and collaborative, PAIR offers a model for research that is both grounded and expansive. The initiative continues to connect Waterloo scholars with Pan African regions and networks, supporting research that is interdisciplinary, globally engaged, and responsive to the realities shaping communities today.