Black Presence: Decolonizing research, teaching & health
Join us on June 26 from 9:00am-6:00pm, for the Department of Physiology’s second symposium on Physiology and Black health.
The event will take place in the Medical Sciences Building (room 2170) and the David Naylor Commons at the University of Toronto, St. George Campus.
The symposium is geared towards those in the Temerty Medicine ecosystem as well as interested parties from the University of Toronto and other universities in Ontario more broadly.
Submit an Abstract by May 30! (details below)
This year’s symposium features Black scholars who will speak to cultural, historical, and contemporary perspectives on research, teaching, and health-related pursuits in the sciences. Their presence and perspectives will spark reflection, celebrate diverse points of view, and promote critical thinking. Black presence itself is an act towards decolonizing academia; as such, we are thrilled to welcome this year’s lineup of speakers:
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Dr. Alexandra Bastiany, the first Black female Canadian Interventional Cardiologist. She is an MD at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and Assistant Professor at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, and she works to decrease the race and gender biases leading to differences in standard of care and clinical outcomes.
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Dr. Kafi Ealey of the School of Nutrition at Toronto Metropolitan University, is an Assistant Professor. She is passionate about examining the biological variations in metabolic systems that contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in the prevalence of obesity-related conditions, including type 2 diabetes, and she studies adipose (fat) tissue.
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Dr. Ola Osman is an Assistant Professor of Black Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She teaches about African and Black Health across the lifespan, and Black health promotion in organization/community/policy-making contexts, and works to widen our lens to relationships between culture, labour, race and ethnonationalism.
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Dr. Andre Fenton, a Professor and the Chair of Neural Science at New York University, will talk to us about “What we think we become” in his keynote address. He researches the molecular, neural, behavioral, and computational aspects of memory and outside of academia, works to deliver technology to low-resource communities. André communicates through diverse media; he suspects that solutions to many of our greatest challenges will also require that most people correctly understand the nature of our minds.
Submit an abstract:
In addition to an interactive panel with our speakers, including a Q&A session, this year we are including presentations from attendees. We encourage anyone who works on topics broadly related to Black teaching, research, and/or health to submit an abstract for consideration as a poster or oral presentation. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: social determinants of health; intersectionality; basic research outcomes; clinical research; teaching practices; racism and trauma, sex and gender disparities, etc. Submit an Abstract by May 30!