The Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication is excited to host sports journalist Shireen Ahmed to deliver the 2025 Kesterton Lecture on the evening of Wednesday, March 12 in the atrium of Richcraft Hall.
The annual Kesterton Lecture honours the memory of Wilfred Kesterton – one of Carleton’s original journalism professors – and usually touches on some aspect of Canadian journalism and public affairs. The annual event was launched in 2001. This is the first time the lecture will be delivered by a sports journalist.
Shireen Ahmed’s lecture will be called “Courage In A Time of Joy.”
“I’m thinking about the growth of women’s sports, but the courage to talk about wider issues that affect women’s sport globally, and the silence that has fenced those spaces,” Ahmed said.
Register now for the 2025 Kesterton Lecture
Ahmed is an award-winning, multi-platform Senior Contributor with CBC Sports, a TEDx speaker, and an internationally recognized sports activist who focuses on the intersections of racism and misogyny in sports. Her work has been featured globally, and her academic research and contributions continue to be widely published.
CBC Sports Senior Contributor Shireen Ahmed, who is this year’s Kesterton Lecture keynote speaker.
Ahmed is also an athlete, advocate, a community organizer, and works with different communities on empowerment projects. She is a global expert on Muslim women in sport and is the National Ambassador of Sakeenah Canada and the Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors for Hijabi Ballers.
She is a co-creator and co-host of the “Burn It All Down” feminist sports podcast, and teaches Journalism and Sports Media at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is on the Board of Directors of Hijabi Ballers, a friend of Black Girl Hockey Club, part of the Executive Committee of the Muslim Women in Sports Network, and mentors students and budding sports journalists in official and casual capacities.
Ahmed’s passion for sports, politics and women’s issues has been widely recognized and her work has been featured and discussed in The Guardian, TIME magazine, Sports Illustrated, The Walrus, Football Weekly, Racialicious, Chatelaine, The National Post, espnW, The Globe and Mail, MSNBC Democracy Now! and TRT World. She is happily married, has four amazing kids and a phenomenal cat. She says she drinks coffee as a tool of resistance.
After the keynote, Ahmed will be joined on stage for a conversation moderated by CBC journalist Emma Weller, herself a former varsity hockey player and a graduate of Carleton’s Bachelor of Journalism program.
The Kesterton Lecture is free to attend and open to the public, but registration is required for in-person attendance. The lecture will also be livestreamed via YouTube.
All in-person attendees are invited to take part in a reception at 6 pm in the leadup to the keynote, which will commence at 7 p.m.
About Wilfred Kesterton
Wilfred Kesterton was born in Regina in 1914. He was a school teacher when he enlisted in the armed forces and served in England and Holland. As a Second World War veteran, he enrolled in Carleton’s fledgling Journalism school and, in 1949, became one of the earliest graduates of the new Bachelor of Journalism program. He was hired on as a journalism lecturer immediately upon graduation, as the School of Journalism’s second full-time faculty member.
In the next four decades, he would help shape the institution. Until his retirement in 1979, he taught virtually every student who went through our program. Through his writing and research, he also helped define Canadian journalism, as he was one of the first to bring serious scholarly attention to the news media in this country. He specialized in media law and journalism history and published important studies in both areas.
Kesterton literally wrote the book on journalism in this country with the 1967 publication of The History of Journalism in Canada.
The Kesterton Lecture, Carleton Journalism’s signature event, was established in 2001 to honour his pioneering contribution to journalism education in this country.
Thursday, February 20, 2025 in General, Journalism Events, Journalism News, Kesterton Lecture, News
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