Ismahan Yusuf
Assistant Professor
Department: Faculty of Arts
Office: JOR 615, Jorgensen Hall
Email: ismayusuf@torontomu.ca
Phone: 416-979-5000 x556176
Education: BSocSci (Hons.) (University of Ottawa), MA, PHD (Western University)
Discipline: Geography & Environmental Studies
Areas of Expertise:
- Black Feminist Geographies
- Black Muslim Geographies
- Colonialism & Imperialism
- Critical Geopolitics
- Critical Political Geography
Research Interests
Geographies of Resistance; Intersectionality; Race, Gender & Space; Spatial Justice; State Violence
Dr. Ismahan Yusuf is a critical geographer whose intersectional research program examines the relationship between power, positionality, politics, and place. As an assistant professor in the Dept. of Geography and Environment, Dr. Yusuf is dedicated to exploring political geographies across multiple scales (local, national, global) and across marginalities (race, class, gender, religion, status, age, and generations).
Her current research project — funded by Â鶹ÊÓƵ's Black Studies Grant — is entitled "Mapping The Crescent and the Crossroads: An Intersectional Analysis of Black Muslim Canadians' Patterns, Practices, and Perceptions of Public Space in the Greater Â鶹ÊÓƵ Area." This exciting project, which centers the population at the heart of her research, is underway and thriving.
Scholarly Calling
I am a Black Muslim geographer whose scholarship centers on three interwoven concerns: power, positionality, and place. Situated at the intersections of Black, feminist, and critical political geographies, my research examines how global systems of oppression are spatially produced, maintained, contested, and reimagined. Black Muslim women consistently remain at the heart of my work, as their geographies illuminate the complex entanglements of race, gender, religion, place, and space.
My research and coursework are ultimately guided by a deceptively simple question: how does power shape the places we inhabit, and how do we, in turn, reshape power?
I hope to inspire emerging Black scholars to trust the value of their perspectives, pursue questions that matter to them, challenge established ways of thinking, and recognize that they have the power to reconfigure the intellectual landscapes they inherit. You are authors of knowledge, capable of rewriting (and righting) a world in which you belong.
To study geography is to study the intimate relationship between power and possibility: who is permitted to exist, where, and on whose terms.
Related Content
- Yusuf, I. (2023). How They Learned to Stop Worrying and Love (the) Restrictions? Reimagining COVID-19 Lockdowns-as-Liberative and Restorative. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 54(3), 109-128.
- Yusuf, I., Oklikah, D. O., Kutor, S., & Arku, G. (2023). There's no place like [your] home: Exploring Somali hospitality as a care-full choreography enhancing Somali Canadian diasporic wellbeing. Wellbeing, Space and Society, 4, 100145.
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