The Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University are pleased to announce that Dr. Nadia Abu-Zahra has been named to the Joint Chair in Women’s Studies at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa.
Dr. Abu-Zahra is an Associate Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa, and a member of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre. She holds a DPhil in Geography from the University of Oxford, where she subsequently worked as a Research Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre. She speaks five languages, including English, French and Arabic.
Her expertise is in migration, identity documentation and population control, especially in Palestine and the Middle East. She has a longstanding interest in pedagogy, works closely with university services and research groups in active, experiential, and community-engaged teaching and learning, and was a finalist for the Ottawa Network for Education’s Capital Educators’ Award
Her research focuses on the everyday consequences and spaces for agency in situations of crisis. Most recently, her work examines the role of higher education institutions in transforming power relations and opening spaces for healthy and accountable relations. Dr. Abu-Zahra also co-facilitates, with Professor Emily Regan Wills, “Community Mobilization in Crisis,” a project that co-creates open educational resources with community mobilizers around the world in multiple languages, and supports the use of the resources transnationally to strengthen communities
As the Joint Chair in Women’s Studies, Dr. Abu-Zahra will teach seminars, engage in collaborative research projects, and organize events at both universities to foster dialogue and research on feminist pedagogies with students, staff and faculty, as well as feminist organizations and feminist pedagogy practitioners at the local, regional, national and transnational levels. Dr. Abu-Zahra will also be acting as a resource person on women’s issues and feminist research.
Dr. Abu-Zahra invites students, staff and faculty, as well as feminist organizations and feminist pedagogy practitioners, to join in communities of practice with the theme “Sharing Feminist Pedagogy and Mobilising Solidarity in Our Learning Environment”. These communities of practice will be opportunities to share experiences and interests in learning and in transforming the structures and contexts of learning.
Dr. Abu-Zahra will also facilitate credit-bearing seminars in “Feminist Pedagogy, Community Mobilization, and Learning”.
Email for more information or to join a community of practice!