Research Panel Description
The panel features graduate history students from the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto. Panelists include Tolulope Akande (University of Waterloo), Arshad Desai (University of Toronto), and Abigail Opoku (University of Waterloo). The event will be hybrid: held in the MacKirdy Reading Room (HH 117) at the University of Waterloo and on Zoom.
Hosts and Registration
The event is hosted by the Tri-University Graduate Student Association (TUGSA) and the History Anti-Racism Taskforce (HART) (part of the Department of History at the University of Waterloo) and is their first Graduate Student Speaker Series event.
This panel brings attention to the crucial and innovative research in Black history being carried out by graduate students.
Light refreshments will be provided for those attending in person. A Zoom link will be sent out the day before the event.
Speaker Topics and Bios
Tolulope Akande- The colonial history of Nigeria and the Royal Niger Company
Tolulope (she/her) is a master's student in the Department of History at the University of Waterloo. She received her BA in History and a master's degree in Diplomacy from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Her current research is concerned with juvenile delinquency and the Nigerian justice system. She focuses on the colonial roots of juvenile crime and its long-term consequences, using prison records from British colonial archives, available primary sources in Nigeria, and interdisciplinary scholarship. Her research interests are diverse and include African history, the history of prisons and punishment, colonialism, and legal history.
Arshad Desai - To Be 'Un/silenced': The Interplay of Archives, Blackness, and Canadian History in That Happy Road.
Arshad Desai is a second year PhD student at the University of Toronto. He earned his BA and MA in History, as well as the Black Canadian Studies Certificate, from York University, and last year he was awarded the prestigious Canada Graduate Scholarship to Honour Nelson Mandela. His forthcoming publication, "To Be 'Un/silenced': The Interplay of Archives, Blackness, and Canadian History in That Happy Road" will appear in Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper, co-edited by Sean Mills, Eric Fillion, and Désirée Rochat, in Fall 2023.
Abigail Opoku - Writing Girls into African Histories: Female Education and the Colonial project in the Gold Coast
Abigail Opoku is a recent graduate (MA in History) from the University of Waterloo, with hopes to begin her PhD studies this fall. Her research interests span broadly under these themes: (West) African Studies, Histories of empires and colonization, Histories of Women and girls, and Colonial Education. She is particularly interested in the various encounters that took place in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) between Europeans and locals, and how such events shaped conceptions of childhood and ideas of gender. As such, her Master's Research Paper, “Changed Men would require Changed Women”: The Organization of Female Education in the Gold Coast before the 1930s, focused on the introduction of formal female education in the Gold Coast before the 1930s, emphasizing how gendered conceptions on both sides of the encounter influenced its organization, prioritization, and development. Her PhD project will continue this line of inquiry, arguing that female education was central to the consolidation of the colonial project in the Gold Coast.