Project Investigator: Muna-Udbi Ali

Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Term: 2025-2027

This two-year SSHRC Insight Development project with University of Western Ontario and Toronto Metropolitan University investigates Black cluster hiring initiatives to examine whether they represent meaningful steps to challenge anti-Black racism in Canadian universities. It aims to contribute to the existing literature on systemic anti-Black racism in higher education and offers a conceptual and analytic framework for scholars working at the intersection of policy, labour, and Black studies. The study challenges Canadian universities to do more than increase the complement of Black faculty within their institutions but also to create a working environment in which all Black faculty can thrive. A study of Canadian Black cluster hiring initiatives is timely not only because of shared institutional interests in EDI, but also because they may offer a model for what future cluster hiring might look like for other equity-deserving groups in universities and other public institutions.