National & International Roundtable

A scholar, historian, poet, and social and cultural commentator, Dr. Afua Cooper’s expertise in and contributions to the arts, history, and education were recognized when she was presented in 2005 with the Harry Jerome Award for Professional Excellence, and in 2007 with the Planet Africa Renaissance Award. Afua holds a Ph.D. in Black Canadian Studies and the African Diaspora from the University of Toronto. Her expertise includes African Canadian culture, Black women’s history, gender, slavery, abolition, and freedom, Black literatures, and education. She has conducted research on African-descended people and their culture across Canada, and internationally in Jamaica, France, the United States, Britain, Senegal, and Ethiopia. Her co-authored publication We’re Rooted Here and they Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History won the Joseph Brant prize for the best history book. Her ground-breaking book on Canadian slavery, The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montreal was nominated for the Governor General’s award. Afua has curated and worked on six exhibits including, The Underground Railroad, Next Stop Freedom,Enslaved Africans in Upper Canada, and The Transatlantic Slave Trade. In addition, Afua has designed and taught courses on gender, and Black history and culture at several universities. She has also lectured on these topics nationally and internationally. Further, Dr. Cooper served as the co-ordinator and chief knowledge officer of the Ontario Initiative to Commemorate the Bicentenary of the British Slave Trade Abolition, in 2007.  Essence Magazine named her as one of the twenty-five women who are shaping the world.