Research

Black Health Matters: National and Transnational COVID-19 impact, resistance, and intervention strategies project

This research is currently in progress thanks to the support from the University of Toronto and Balsam Foundation. Please visit https://blackhealthmatterscovid19.ca/

Principal Investigator: Roberta K. Timothy, Ph.D.

This research is currently taking place at Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. The purpose of this research is to study how COVID-19 has impacted African/Black individuals and communities, front line health care workers and essential service workers and how systemic/structural violence are barriers to effective prevention, treatment, and management of COVID-19 in the African/Black population. We are also looking at strategies to respond effectively to the impact of COVID-19 on African/Black communities, including front line health service workers and essential service workers in Canada and transnationally. Finally, we want to create opportunities to share knowledge to enhance government, institutional, community and individual responses to the impact of COVID-19 on African/Black communities in Canada and transnationally. Timothy (2021).

Resistance Education: African/Black women shelter worker’s perspectives

“This dissertation examined the lived and worked experiences, and resistance of African/Black women shelter workers. It focuses on 18 differently located African/Black women who worked in shelters in Toronto between 1995 and 2005 during governmental cuts and organizational restructuring processes. This study re-centered and re-historicized these often-missing stories of African/Black women, their indigenous feminist knowledges, and their activism. The purpose of this study was to examine intersectional violence and resistance in woman abuse shelters. African/Black feminist, anti-colonial theorization and praxis are critical for resistance against intersectional forms of violence including racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, ageism, and other interlocking oppressions. ‘Resistance Education‘, a qualitative methodology developed and utilized in this study, provided an integrated, feminist/womanist, anti-colonial, anti-racist, analysis and praxis. The seven features of this methodological approach challenge traditional notions of Eurocentric ‘objective’ research by re-centering the standpoint of African/Black women’s voices, as well as the voices of other oppressed groups, in both research and education. This methodology, incorporating art-based strategies of resistance and activism, formulates and utilizes a method called ‘Creative Resistance’. Collective witnessing, consciousness raising/sharing, and collective action provided individual and collective locations, identities, and agency, which supported revolutionary social change and transnational feminist actions. The ‘Identity Trichotomy’ discussed in this study reveals the complexities of essentialized derogatory sameness, heterogeneous identities, and collective resistance.
This research study contributes to feminist historical analysis of the larger violence against women communities as it provides the missing voices and stories of African/Black women shelter workers. It also adds innovation to qualitative methodology by providing another approach to doing feminist, anti-colonial, anti-racist, art-based research and resistance. This dissertation in itself is an act of resistance and revolutionary agency”. Timothy (2007).

This poster was presented in 2013 at the 122nd American Psychological Association’s Annual Convention in Washington D.C.

Impact of Criminalization of Nondisclosure of HIV-Positive Status on Racialized Communities

“In Canada, since the late 80’s, there have been over 70 convictions and more than 90 HIV-positive people have been on trial for having unprotected sex, even when no HIV transmission occurred (Mykhalovskiy, 2010). Notably, the Cuerrier decision (1998) by the Supreme Court of Canada became a landmark case that ruled that a person living with HIV who does not disclose his or her HIV- positive status and exposes another person to a ‘significant risk’ of HIV transmission, could be found guilty of aggravated assault (Symington, 2009). The majority of cases of persons convicted under HIV Criminalization legislation in Canada have been African/Black men (ACCHO, 2010). This poster examined the impact of criminalization of non-disclosure of HIV positive African/Black people living with HIV from a historical and contemporary transnational perspective. This research utilized an intersectional anti-oppression, social determinant of health approach to examine African/Black communities affected by HIV/AIDS in the Greater Toronto Area as well as its international impact. Specifically, this poster discussed my research findings on the experiences and responses to the impact of criminalization of non-disclosure of HIV positive status and increased HIV stigma on African Diasporic communities from the perspectives of African/Black women and men living with HIV; service providers (therapist, case workers, social workers) and agency directors working in the HIV Sector; and the legal sector (politicians, lawyers and/or judges)”. Timothy (2013).

The findings of the research were presented at the 2013 OHTN Research Conference

This poster was presented in 2013 at the 122nd American Psychological Association’s Annual Convention in Washington D.C.