Criminology professor Kerry Taylor receives a U of T Teaching Fellowship

Kerry Taylor, an assistant professor, teaching stream, at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Science, has received a U of T Teaching Fellowship.

The fellowship – one of two awarded in 2019-20 – gives teaching stream faculty members the opportunity to engage in a pedagogical project that will benefit students and that is in an area of institutional priority. Each fellow receives $10,000 to hire graduate students as research assistants, and an additional $5,000 for professional development.

Prof. Taylor is planning a fourth-year undergraduate course that will expand on her existing third-year offering, “Indigenous Peoples and Criminal Justice.” The new course will offer students the opportunity to challenge their own understandings of law, settler colonialism, crime, justice and Indigenous ways of knowing and being.  Working in collaboration with the Centre for Indigenous Studies, Prof. Taylor plans to develop relationships between Indigenous communities and her students “rooted in relevance, respect, reciprocity and responsibility.”

“I am grateful to be able to create an opportunity for experiential learning focussed on uncovering and challenging the systemic gendered racism perpetuated against Indigenous Peoples by the Canadian state," she says. "As a white settler academic, I hope to expand my own holistic teaching praxis to foster and value many ways of knowing and being."