Photos by Stacy Lee and Nadya Kwandibens
Dean's Lecture on Information + Society | Robyn Maynard & Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
We were pleased to partner with SFU Library to bring you the Dean's Lecture on Information + Society: an evening of conversation with Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. This event was part of the 2021 Community Summit: Towards Equity.
Online Event
Part of Towards Equity
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified inequities and exposed the deficiencies of our institutions. It has confirmed we must enact change and signaled that transformation is possible. What must we understand –and do– to recover equitably and reimagine our systems to confront the intersecting crises of inequality, systemic racism and climate change?
Towards Equity, SFU Public Square’s 2021 Community Summit Series will take place online throughout the year and will bring the university into conversation with local and global communities. Join us to learn and take action together towards a more just, equitable and sustainable future.
On this page
Robyn Maynard
Robyn Maynard is a Black feminist author and activist-scholar based in Toronto. Her first book, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Fernwood, 2017) is a perennial national best-seller that has appeared on multiple best-of-the-year lists and has become a flagship text for its groundbreaking contributions to public discourse as well as a wide assortment of scholarly disciplines. Recent works include Police Abolition/Black Revolt and the educational resource A Roadmap to Police-Free Futures in Canada. Her wide-ranging body of work on policing, abolition and Black liberation has received a number of prominent nominations and awards, has been translated into multiple languages, and is taught widely across universities in Canada, the US and Europe.
With Pascale Diverlus, Robyn Maynard co-hosts Building the World We Want, an abolition lab and monthly political education learning series, and she is currently finalizing an epistolary collaboration with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson titled Rehearsals for Living, forthcoming with Knopf Canada in 2022.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician and member of Alderville First Nation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song — bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and the United States and has twenty years experience with Indigenous land based education. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh.
She is the author of seven previous books, including the newly released A Short History of the Blockade, and the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies which was released in the US earlier this year by the University of Minnesota Press. Leanne has released four albums including f(l)ight and Noopiming Sessions, and her new work Theory of Ice. Her latest book, co-authored with Robyn Maynard and entitled Rehearsals for Living, is forthcoming in 2022.
Sponsor
This event is generously funded by the Thakore Learning and Events Endowment.
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