Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellows

About the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship

The University of Toronto Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program provides funding to increase opportunities for hiring postdoctoral fellows from underrepresented groups, specifically Indigenous and/or Black researchers. These fellowships will enable postdoctoral researchers to grow their scholarly profiles, undertake academic work at the University of Toronto, and strengthen the research environment at the University with diverse perspectives.

Announcing the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellows

  • Temitope Abiola, Department of Chemistry
  • Jaimy Fischer, Human Geography (UTSC)
  • Tricia Tinashe Jakwa, Global Development Studies (UTSC)
  • Ainsely Lewis, Biology (UTM)
  • Sylvia Mutinda, Cell and Systems Biology
  • Aimable Nkurunziza, Faculty of Nursing
  • Samia Tecle, Department of Sociology (UTM)
  • Tobit Liyandja, Biological Sciences (UTSC)
  • Bamidele Emmanuel Ola, Public Health Sciences (Dalla Lana School of Public Health)
  • Ketty Anyeko, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies
  • Lisa Boivin, Rehabilitation Sciences Institute
  • John (Waaseyaabin) Hupfield, Wasauksing First Nation, Women & Gender Studies Institute
  • Oluwole Kunuji, Faculty of Law
  • Ayodele Odutayo, Department of Medicine
  • Jessica Penney, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
  • Aleczandria Tiffany, Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry
  • Abdallatif Abdalrhman, Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering
  • Gerald Bareebe, Department of Political Science (UTSC)
  • Kristen Bos, Women & Gender Studies Institute (A&S) (current Kristen Bos, WGSI (UofT))
  • Lori Chambers, Factor Inwentash School of Social Work
  • Nicole Marie Muir, Department of Public Health Sciences (current Nicole Muir | LaMarsh Centre for Child & Youth Research
  • Mary Rambaran-Olm, Department of English and Drama (UTM)
  • Ian Tobias, Department of Cell and Systems Biology
John Hupfield

For the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, I propose Niimiwin miinwaa mushkiki – Dance and Medicine: awakening the dance spirit through powwow dance, an anticolonial Anishinaabe project that approaches pedagogy as ‘a doing’ through movement. This project will seed knowledge production through the following research: powwow’s as living labs and sites of kin-making, partnerships with UTM / UofT lab spaces, powwow dance and Indigenous movement workshops series, Anishinaabe language reading groups, and the development of a mobile Movement Lab.

John Waaseyaabin Hupfield
2022 Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient

Fellows in the News

Creating trauma-free cancer treatments: Temitope Abiola on receiving a 2023 Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship

Congratulations to postdoctoral researcher Temitope (Tosin) Abiola, who was awarded a 2023 Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship.

In 2018, the University of Toronto launched the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program to increase opportunities for hiring postdoctoral fellows from underrepresented groups, specifically Indigenous and Black researchers. Every year, this award enables seven to nine postdoctoral researchers to grow their scholarly profiles, undertake academic work at the University of Toronto, and strengthen the university’s research environment with diverse perspectives.

Abiola’s research with University Professor R.J. Dwayne Miller’s group focuses on creating technology that could make cancer therapies more efficient and less painful.  

Read more ⇨

Provost Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Amy Shawanda hired at McGill University

Congratulations to Dr. Amy Shawanda, a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health for being hired as a tenure track Assistant Professor at the Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, Montreal Quebec. Dr. Shawanda is from the Anishinaabek Nation whose diverse research interests include Indigenous health, decolonizing/Indigenizing mainstream institutions, research methods and methodologies, Indigeneity, language, teaching pedagogies, governance, Dream Knowledges, and storytelling.

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Camille Turner photograph by Ebti Nabag

Camille Turner announced as first Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Daniels Faculty

Camille Turner, a celebrated Toronto-based artist and academic, has recently been announced as the first Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow from the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto. Turner works “to make visible and audible the histories, memories and geopolitics of Blackness in Canada.” Her transdisciplinary artworks, exhibitions, performances, and projects have incorporated extensive research on the hidden history of slavery in Canada, as well as its omission from popular conceptions of national identity.

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New U of T professor Nadège Compaoré on being Black in academia and why representation matters

In July 2022, Nadège Compaoré started as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She describes the position as her “dream job” – the culmination of an obstacle-filled academic journey that began 19 years ago when she arrived in Canada from Burkina Faso on a full scholarship.

Read more ⇨

News Links

Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship recipients at the Faculty Club luncheon, October 2019. (Left to Right: Nadège Compaoré, Debby Danard, Ahmed Ilmi, and Nikoli Attai). Other recipients include Nemoy Lewis (FAS, Geography, supervisor Prof. Deborah Cowen), Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora (Faculty of Law, supervisor Prof. Jutta Brunnée), and Kilian Nasung Atuoye (UTM, Geography, supervisor Prof. Vincent Z. Kuuire).

“This program is invaluable because it gives me an opportunity to work with leading experts in my field and provide me with the necessary support to commence my new research study.”

— Nemoy Lewis

Additional Information

Learn more about Postdoctoral Awards