Peace NBGN members,
The NBGN Leadership Team hopes that 2022-23 was an amazingly successful academic year for you all. We are excited for you to read the 2022-23 NBGN annual report to highlight some of our events and keep you all updated on what we have been doing over this past school year.
It is important to reiterate that the National Black Graduate Network (NBGN) is an initiative to promote communication and collaboration among Black graduate students and students of Black Studies in Canada. In the words of the late great bell hooks, “one of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.” These words of hooks define what the NBGN is all about. The mission of the NBGN is to build community through communication among Black graduate students who often find themselves pursuing education in spaces where whiteness is dominate and sometimes unsafe. The NBGN is the space where you can access resources, get support, and build solidarity on this journey in higher education.
The NBGN staff are constantly thinking and working toward improving communications with the members of this network. Please remember that the message board is a way for Black graduate students and students in Black studies to communicate and network internally so we can share our research work and ideas and build networks and resources. Most importantly, it helps us to get to know one another and move as a collective, as much as we can, despite being in different provinces across Canada. Remember there is strength in numbers.
We encourage each member of the NBGN to use the message board to reach out to others, ask questions and share ideas and experiences related to Black Studies and being Black grad students. It is also a space to post and learn about employment opportunities in higher ed., in-person events such as the 2023 Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress conference that took place at York University, and online events like the Chill and Chat series that the NBGN Staff member Cherie Daniel has hosted each month.
NBGN also offer opportunities for our members to write and post blogs every month on various topics that impact and affect Black graduate students and students of Black studies across Canada. Dr. Crystal Garvey posted a blog on October 14, 2022, entitled My Lamentation where she wrote about the negative ideation that comes with dealing with mental health. marcus singleton posted two blog posts, one on February 16, 2023, reflecting on a talk by Dr. Andrea Davis on Black Studies, and another one on December 1, 2022, based on a CBC article by Dr. Evelyn Asiedu entitled The Good & Bad of Black Grad. We encourage all our members to contact us at hello@nbgn.ca if you would like to write a blog and post anything in relation to the life of Black graduate students and students of Black studies.
The NBGN currently has 245 members and still growing. We would love to continue to welcome new members in the 2023-24 school year so please tell anyone you know who a Black graduate student or students of Black Studies to please consider becoming a member. All they must do is go the NBGN website and click on the “JOIN NOW” button and sign up. We want all Black graduate students to benefit from the community we are creating here at NBGN.
We also have a NBGN WhatsApp chat group with 16 of our 245 members currently connected. We would like to increase this number of participants in the upcoming year as well. If you would like to join our WhatsApp chat group, please send us an email at hello@nbgn.ca so we can get you connected. We also have a Twitter account for external communication for other possible participants can connect with us as well.
We, the NBGN Leadership Team members are grateful to the NBGN members for your involvement in the network and we are always open and welcome to increase participation—your feedback, ideas, volunteers, etc. It is important to us to continue to grow a sense of community among the members of the network in the coming year, and to this end, plan to start a newsletter to help keep the members of the network up to date. Again, we encourage our members to become bloggers and use the NBGN platform as an opportunity to practice writing brief pieces for online publication you can list on your CVS.
We are also open to any outreach and potential collaborations with Black student associations at universities across the country, and with other national Black student networks and associations e.g., Black student caucus of CFS, Black Law Students’ Association, Black Medical Students’ Association, and NSBE Canada.
We are very excited for the upcoming 2023-24 year and look forward to this network growing and serving Black graduate students and students of Black studies in the future. I am happy to let you know that I will be continuing to serve on the leadership team in the 2023-2024 academic year, along with my colleague, PhD student Aayah Amir.
Cherie Daniel will continue her involvement as an active member of our network, and I’m sure that you all join me in thanking Cherie for her work as part of the leadership team that launched the NBGN in 2020, and for developing and coordinating our main activity, the NBGN Chill & Chats, over the past three years. In the section below, Cherie highlights some of the NBGN activities over the past year.
Wishing everyone a wonderful end to the summer and an inspiring start to the fall semester.
In solidarity,
marcus singleton
NBGN Leadership Team
PhD Candidate, Social Justice Education
OISE, University of Toronto
2022-2023 NBGN Activities Highlights
Chill & Chats
Our first Chill & Chat of the 2022-2023 year was hosted from Queen’s University by our member Renee Whittaker. Renee spoke about her PhD program and provided some information about initiatives and programming for Black students on the Queen’s campus. This was the 1st trial of having nation-wide members hosting “Chill & Chats”. We are looking forward to reaching out in the Fall with the potential dates for Chill & Chats and invite others to volunteer to host future zoom events from their institutions.
In January, we had Keachea Dixon, an Intellectual Property lawyer in the Province of Ontario, speak to us about how to protect your academic work. Ms. Dixon provided us with an extensive presentation about our rights within the academy. The information was rooted in ensuring that we understand the importance of believing in our work. Ms. Dixon also reaffirmed that the work of graduate students and professors benefits the universities as well as our careers. Therefore it is important to understand our rights in terms of ownership of what we produce and what we are willing to compromise during our careers.
In February we had Dr. Andrea Davis speak to us about the 2023 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences being held at York University, and all the opportunities for Black and Indigenous students that she was ensuring as the Congress host There was an unprecedented amount of free and accessible programming this year as well. There was a lounge gathering space for participants at Congress to meet and a hospitality suite. Dr. Davis even arranged a space in the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) offices for our own NBGN members to use and meet.
In March, the NBGN welcomed Dr. Funke Aladejebi and Dr. Bianca Beauchemin who spoke to us about what it means to be Black junior faculty in academia. Dr. Beauchemin was hired while she was doing her dissertation and talked about negotiating her position so that she could complete her post-doc before starting her work as a full-time professor. While she was happy to have had that opportunity, she emphasized that the route she took is not for everyone. Dr. Aladejibi spoke about the importance of self-care and preventing burn out.
In April we focused on the process of achieving candidacy with University of Toronto Ph.D. Candidate, Ryan Neepin. Ryan is a member of the Fox Lake Cree Nation and spoke very candidly about the importance of keeping yourself grounded during this process. Ryan was intentional to speak about having solidarity with other people for support. Kayla Webber also spoke at this session; her Ph.D. focuses on Black and Indigenous housing. Kayla spoke about her why her project is important and about some of the difficulties that both communities face. Both of these emerging scholars spoke about the importance of being responsible for the work we produce and to those who are the focus of the work, as often our communities are exploited, and information is extracted and does not circle back to benefit the communities.
Finally, in May, as Congress approached, Dr OmiSoore Dryden and Dr. rosalind hampton provided us with more information about navigating conferences. We were given information about networking and being intentional in presenting. Both professors spoke candidly and had a conversation with us about their experiences at Congresses and at conferences in general. They stressed the importance of seeking out conferences that offer opportunities for scholars in Black Studies to share our work, and conferences that are intentional in supporting Black and Indigenous students.
Conference presentations
Members of the NBGN went on to participate in two conferences at the 2023 Congress—the Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA) and the Canadian Association of Graduate Students (CAGS).
The first NBGN panel included Dr. Crystal Garvey, Renee Whittaker, marcus singleton and me, Cherie A. Daniel. We spoke about Black feminist theory and the battle against invisibility and for Black voices to be heard, with about 10-15 people in attendance. We spoke about what it looks like to support Black feminism within the academy, and there were frank discussions about what we can expect from our various institutions and what we should be doing to promote our work. There were testimonies about the need for more funding for Black students generally to be able to focus on research and having more opportunities to just enjoy being students.
The second panel was part of the Career corner designated space provided by the Canadian Association for Graduate Students. CAGS reached out to the leadership team to inquire if we wanted to participate in a talk titled “Navigating Your Career Transition: Insight and Advice for Black, Indigenous, and Racialized Graduate Students Searching for Careers with Purpose.” The session was moderated by Dr. Nicole Kaniki and Dinuka Gunaratne, and featured the NBGN leadership team, marcus singleton and Cherie A. Daniel, along with fellow panelists Karine Coen-Sanchez, (P.hD. Candidate in Sociology at University of Ottawa), Sahr Wali (PhD Candidate in Health Policy at University of Toronto), Annalissa Crisostomo (Community Consultant and incoming PhD student at OISE, University of Toronto). Topics included maneuvering through academic spaces; navigating the intersections of identity while in privileged, white dominated spaces; the importance of community support for students; and addressing experiences of racism across institutions and geographic locations.
In the coming year, we are looking forward to further outreach inviting NBGN members to host Chill & Chat sessions from their universities. Thanks for the past three years on the NBGN leadership team. It has been incredible to see the network grow over the years from an idea to this national reality and I am looking forward to continuing as an active member of our network in the moths ahead.
All the best to NBGN members and the 2023-2024 leadership,
Cherie A. Daniel
NBGN Leadership Team
PhD Student, Social Justice Education
OISE, University of Toronto
