Dr. Farha Shariff, Ph.D @drfarha077 

Intersectional Anti-Oppression educator, Senior Advisor of EDID Initiatives, EDID Advisor to the Dean,  Interim Director Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta

Daughter to immigrant settlers, academic colleague, and  Senior Advisor of EDID Initiatives, EDI advisor to the Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta.  I serve as the senior advisor to the Dean on EDID initiatives and have brought a wealth of lived experience and expertise to this role. As a U Alberta alumnus, I earned my PhD in Secondary Education in 2012, and I have contributed to the Faculty through my teaching and service over the last decade. My work is grounded in deep commitments to equity and anti-oppression and am sought after by organizations who seek my advice as they aim to transform their practices in more socially just ways. 

My areas of research and interest include intersectional antiracism, cultural identity, positionality, power and privilege.  In addition, my role is to work with Internationally educated teachers in their understandings of culture, race, schooling and curriculum. I am deeply committed to helping educators and community members reach their very best potential through critical dialogue and building relationships.  

I acknowledge that I am a Settler of Colour, the daughter of Muslim settler immigrants from Uganda and Pakistan. We are uninvited guests, living, teaching and learning on the ancestral, traditional and unceded territory of Treaty 6, the Métis homelands, Region 4.  This is a gathering place that encompasses 17 First Nations in central AB: including the Dene Suliné, Cree, Nakota Sioux and Saulteaux peoples whose living languages and histories and cultures impact and influence the diverse personal and professional communities in which I live and work.  It is my commitment as Muslim settler of Colour, an educator, daughter to immigrants and a mother, to be deeply invested in my own unlearning of colonial structures and systems of White supremacy that have persisted for centuries. My ongoing commitment, solidarity and co-conspiritorship with Indigenous peoples to learn alongside them is lifelong, generational and a legacy I will leave for my children.