A recording of the full conversation can be found on the
Chapel's YouTube Channel here
Special Guest Panel
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Dr. Claudine Bonner |
Dr. Claudine Bonner is a scholar of African Diaspora history and education, and a member of the Sociology Department and Women's and Gender Studies Program at Acadia University. Her research is grounded in history, and broadly applied in analyses of race, gender, education, and identity in contemporary Canada. Her scholarship bridges the gap between studies of the Black Canadian experience and the broader African Diaspora, and crosses generational boundaries through innovative oral histories, community-based research, and published collaborative research with leading Canadian scholars.
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Executive Director Imhotep’s |
Mr. Sidney Idemudia moved to Canada from Nigeria to pursue an education in Engineering. He has a diploma in Engineering from Acadia University and a Bachelor of Materials Engineering from Dalhousie University. He is the Executive Director of Imhotep’s Legacy Academy (ILA) at Dalhousie University, a non- profit organization focused on increasing the representation of persons of African heritage Sidney has a strong interest in entrepreneurship and spends his free time working on his side projects. He founded SeeMeNow Apparel in 2014; an e-commerce store that sells fashion forward and affordable clothing for men and women. Sidney believes in his home country Nigeria as a hub that can foster innovative ideas by empowering its youth. In 2019, he founded Mudia Innovation Center; a non-profit organization to support the success of Nigerian learners in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) fields by providing the educational support necessary for academic success and career development. Sidney is active in his local community and participates in activities that promote equitable access to educational experiences for African Canadian learners. He serves on the Board of the Council of African Canadian Education (CACE), which is mandated to provide advice and guidance to the provincial Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development with respect to the development, implementation, evaluation, and funding of educational programs and services for African Nova Scotian learners. He serves on the Dalhousie University’s Promoting Leadership in Health for African Nova Scotians (PLANS) Advisory Committee which provides advice to the university’s Deans of dentistry, health and medicine on programs that can improve health outcomes. He serves on the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion committee for the faculty of Engineering at Dalhousie University. |
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Associate Professor |
Marc Ramsay is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Acadia University. His primary research interests are in the philosophy of law. He has written on free expression, legal moralism, liberalism, parental rights, and tort theory. |
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Professor Anthony G. Reddie Director Author of 'Theologising Brexit: A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique' (London: Routledge, 2019) |
Professor Anthony G. Reddie is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture in Regent’s Park College, in the University of Oxford. He is also an Extraordinary Professor of Theological Ethics and a Research Fellow with the University of South Africa. He is the first Black person to get an ‘A’ rating in Theology and Religious studies in the South African National Research Foundation. This designation means that he is a leading international researcher. He has a BA in History and a Ph.D. in Education (with theology) both degrees conferred by the University of Birmingham. He is a prolific author of books, articles and chapters in edited books. His latest book is the republished Is God Colour Blind?First published in 2009 by SPCK. He is the author of Theologizing Brexit: A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique(Routledge, 2019). This book is the first intercultural and postcolonial theological exploration of the Brexit phenomenon. His previous book was Journeying to Justice (Paternoster Press, 2017) (co-edited with Wale Hudson Roberts and Gale Richards). He is the Editor of Black Theology: An International Journal and is also a trustee of the ‘British and Irish Association for Practical Theology’. He is a recipient of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2020 Lambeth, Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship, given for ‘exceptional and sustained contribution to Black Theology in Britain and Beyond’. |
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Associate Professor |
Donna L. Seamone, (Ph.D. Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley) is Associate Professor of Comparative Religion Classics at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where she also holds the Lumsden Chair in Religious Studies. She has also taught at Wilfrid Laurier University and McMaster University. Her core research proficiencies are in the performance approach to ritual and ethnographic approaches to the study of lived religion. She combines ritual studies and narrative approaches to the study of experience focusing on religious systems as cultures, the interface between lived-religion and culture; and on issues of nature-body-spirit relationships, gender, ethnicity, race, and class. Her major work, ‘This is My Story, This is my Song”: A Pentecostal Woman's Life Story and Ritual Performance. University of California Press (Forthcoming) is an ethnographic study of Afro-Canadian-Caribbean Pentecostal ritual and daily life, based on a two-year fieldwork study of an Afro-Caribbean-Canadian Pentecostal Church. She has published articles related to this topic and has served as is the Guest co editor (with Ute Hüsken) of special issue of the Journal of Ritual Studies on “The Denial of Ritual. She has two book manuscripts in progress, an auto-ethnography called Acting out: Anti-feminism and Reinvention of Religious Life and an ethnographic study called Down-to-Earth: Farm Religion and Ritualizing. She has given invited lectures at the University of Oslo, the University of Heidelberg, University of Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier University. |
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Assistant Professor |
Martin Tango, PhD, P.Eng., Associate Professor in the School of Engineering, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. Dr. Tango teaches and conducts applied research at the Ivan Curry School of Engineering, Faculty of Pure and Applied Science. The School of Engineering offers a two-year Certificate (Diploma) in Engineering as well as a three-year Bachelor of Applied Science degree program. Upon satisfactory completion of the Certificate in Engineering as well as Bachelor of Applied Science degree, graduates proceed to complete their engineering degrees at Faculty of Engineering, Dalhousie University. Dr. Tango is passionate and believes in educational empowerment through equity, disability and inclusion (EDI) to enrich engaged-learning, innovative teaching and research methodologies for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in the University environment. He is a regular reviewer of manuscripts submitted in several reputable journals, often publishes scientific articles in refereed journals and presents technical papers as well as posters at various conferences. He currently serves on the President’s Anti-Racism Task Force, that will collaboratively contribute to the formulation of the forward-thinking Action Plans to address Anti-Racism challenges for Indigenous and Black community members at Acadia University. |
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Senior Instructor |
Dr. Anna Frammartino Wilks received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and is currently full-time senior Instructor in the department of Philosophy at Acadia University. She is also coordinator of the Acadia Women in Philosophy group. Her research interests are metaphysics, epistemology and ethics in Kant and Early Modern Philosophy; causality, substance, and the self; and the application of Kant’s thought to problems in the philosophy of biology, theory of mind, and theoretical issues in artificial intelligence. Her recent publications include: “Augmenting Autonomy Through Neurotechnological Intervention À La Kant − Paradox or Possibility?” (forthcoming), “Robotic Responsibility” (2019), “Kantian Challenges for the Bioenhancement of Moral Autonomy” (2018). Her current research projects focus on historical and contemporary theories of function in philosophy of biology, the problem of biological individuality, the ethics of bioenhancement, and the notion of personhood in robotics. |
