Racism Free Ontario

Uzma Shakir recently joined the City of Toronto, as the Director of Office of Equity, Diversity & Human Rights. She has been a community-based researcher, advocate and an activist. She is the past Executive Director of Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA) and the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO). In the last three years she has been an Atkinson Economic Justice Fellow and an Adjunct Professor, Department of Geography and Programme in Planning, University of Toronto.

Uzma has worked extensively through her research and advocacy to challenge existing notions of research epistemology and develop an anti-racist conceptual framework for research methodology. She challenges the notion of “objective research” through her involvement in domestic issues involving immigrant communities and in particular, the area of mental health. She believes that in order to adequately understand these complex issues it is important to have a personal, emotional investment.

Her work focuses on issues of race, erosion of civil liberties & critical multiculturalism. She has been an advocate; an organizer/facilitator; a writer; and a lecturer on diverse issues facing racialized communities.

• Recipient of the J. S. Woodsworth Award, 2010
• Outstanding Asian Canadian Award, 2008
• Recipient of the Jane Jacob’s Award 2003
• Past Steering Committee member Colour of Poverty Campaign
• Past President, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI)

• (via Uzma Shakir)