This webinar was hosted by YouthREX.

HERE’S HOW THE HOSTS DESCRIBE THIS WEBINAR:

This webinar featured two interrelated presentations examining how Black youth across local and transnational contexts experience systemic barriers while exercising agency, resilience, and world-building.

Drawing on their research, Dr. Mary Goitom and Dr. Ahmed Ali Ilmi highlighted the importance of creating supportive spaces that centre Black youth, affirm hybrid cultural identities, and recognize transnational connections as sources of strength:

Dr. Mary Goitom – Changing Forms of Transnationalism: Rethinking Transnationalism through the Second Generation
Mary shared research on Ethiopian communities in the diaspora, focusing on how second-generation youth engage cross-border connections, community ties, ancestral knowledge systems, and imagined futures as part of their settlement and citizenship experiences. Mary is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at York University, and her community-based research explores migration, mobilities, diasporic connections, transnational processes, and social relations grounded in Ethiopian epistemologies and broader African traditional knowledge systems.

Dr. Ahmed Ali Ilmi – Challenging Islamophobia and Anti-Black Racism
Ahmed presented findings from his research on how Black/African Muslim youth in Toronto construct cultural identities that merge Islamic values with Somali heritage, centred around the concept of Say-Walahi (“swear to God”). His work illuminates how youth navigate both Islamophobia and anti-Black racism in schools and communities, and emphasized the need for education systems to centre Black Muslim identities in classrooms and urban education research. Ahmed is an Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream) in the Department of Global Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. In recognition of his community-engaged scholarship, he received the 2024 African Scholars Community Development Award.