University of Alberta

Professor Listing

MalindaSmith_FacClub_1Nov2018

Malinda S Smith, PhD, MA, MDA, BA (magna cum laude)

Full Professor, and 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow

Arts

Political Science

About Me

I am a full professor in the Department of Political Science, a 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and a Provost Fellow in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Policy in the Office of the Provost at the University of Alberta. I am also the President of the International Studies Association (ISA)-Canada, and Chair of the Research Committee for the Academic Women's Association-University of Alberta. 

My research and engaged scholarship draws on critical theoretical perspectives in the social sciences and the humanities to explore questions of equity, human rights and social justice, African political economy and security studies, and diversity and decoloniality in higher education. My recent published research traverses four main areas: first, diversity in theory and practice; second, critical African security studies including the temporality and spatiality of terrorism; third, global poverty and inequality, and, fourth, gender, critical race and intersectionality in higher education.

I am the author or co-author of journal articles such as, "Race, racialization and Indigeneity in Canadian universities" in Race, Ethnicity and Education, 20, 3 (2017); book chapters such as, "Diversity in Theory, Practice, and Policy" in Contemporary Inequalities and Social Justice in Canada, edited by J. Brodie (University of Toronto Press, 2018); and founder of The Diversity Gap series (e.g.): "Leadership Diversity Gap in U15 Universities" (June 2019), "Towards Closing the Diversity Gap in Research Chairs" (May 2019), "The Indigenous Diversity Gap" (Academic Matters, Spring 2019); "Equity at Canadian Universities: National, Disaggregated, and Intersectional Data" (June 2018); and "The Gender Gap in Canada Research Chairs by Tier and Granting Agency at U15 Institutions" (August 2016).

In 2020 a forthcoming co-edited volume, Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy (with Awad Ibrahim, Tamari Kitossa, Malinda S Smith, Handel K. Wright), will be available. Currently, I am working on a book length manuscript based on my Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellowship project, "A Seat at the Table: Engendering Black Canadian Pasts and Futures," and on a new edition of Critical Concepts: An Introduction to Politics (with J. Brodie and S. Rein) for Oxford University Press.

A Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded study examined the representation and status of racialized and Indigenous scholars, scholarship, and supports in the Canadian academy. Our co-authored book (with Ena Dua, Frances Henry, Carl James, Audrey Kobayashi, Peter Li, and Howard Ramos), The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities, was released in June 2017 with the University of British Columbia Press. 

I am the editor of three books, including Securing Africa: Post-9/11 Discourses on Terrorism (Ashgate/Routledge, 2010); ‘Beyond the African Tragedy’: Discourses on Development and the Global Economy (Ashgate/Routledge, 2006); and Globalizing Africa (Africa World Press, 2003). 

I am the co-editor of two books, including Critical Concepts: An Introduction to Politics (2013, with J. Brodie and S. Rein); and States of Race: Critical Race Feminism for the 21st Century (2010, with S. Razack and S. Thobani). 


Selected National Engagement

Recent Awards, Honours and Recognition:  


Selected Recent Media:

  • "Racism in the academy," by Harriet Eisenkraft, University Affairs Magazine 
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