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Hi, I am Renée Whittaker and am a currently a graduate student at Queen’s University working on my PhD in Cultural Studies. Both my undergraduate and master’s degrees are in Sociology from Ryerson and Queen’s respectively. I have an extensive working history that commenced as working as a Personal Support Worker, working specifically with people with varying needs to intervening into the criminal justice and child welfare system specifically for Black children and children of colour. I have also been teaching college level course, Special topics in sociology and into to Black Studies at Durham College.

As a means of encouraging a supportive learning environment for other graduate students I am currently working with an interdisciplinary team of Black graduate students to create the Queen’s Black Graduate Caucus.

These work experiences inform how I have and continue to approach my research interests which focus on Afro-Caribbean diasporic women and girl’s engagement with self-care, radical care, community, and reformative justice in Canada. I hope to continue to strive to call attention to the ways that care is practiced and how some acts are systemically ignored by Western society but can encourage joyful endurance and reformation. It is also important to mention that there are some things that not everyone needs to know but if you know, you know. You know what I mean?