Kristen Kowlessar

Research Interests

• Cultural and Diasporic Identities
• Whiteness
• Critical Race Theory
• Liberal Multiculturalism
• Race relations in Thunder Bay

About

Kristen Kowlessar (she/they) is a queer Trinidadian* PhD student at Carleton University. Kristen’s research is grounded in a decolonial antiracist feminist praxis and focuses on how multicultural branded events such as the Folklore Festival disrupt, rework, or reinforce the racial order of Thunder Bay. This work builds upon previous hermeneutical phenomenological work on navigating and negotiating racial identity in Thunder Bay.

Kristen is also a lifelong community organizer and advocate, notably serving as the youngest Vice-President in history for the Caribbean African Multicultural Association of Thunder Bay, working with Thunder Bay and Area Victim Services, and most recently, co-founding the CEDAR Care Collective.

*Born in what we call Canada, Kristen is the proud child of immigrants from Trinidad & Tobago and identifies as such, while also acknowledging the nuances and contradictions that come with circuits of recognition under colonialism.

Publications

Kowlessar, Kristen, and Cheyanne Thomas. 2021. ““This space is not for me”: BIPOC identities in academic spaces.” Canadian Review of Sociology 58(3): 447-449.