Ayesha Mian Akram

Ayesha Mian Akram is a doctoral candidate at the University of Windsor’s Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology. Her SSHRC-funded doctoral research in Sociology is a participatory project working with Muslim women activists to investigate how they develop collectives of resistance. She holds a Master's degree in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Alberta, where she conducted a qualitative project to study how racism impacts the identity negotiations of Canadian-born Muslim women who practice hijab. Her research is rooted in the intersections of anti-racism studies, religion, gender, and subjectivity.

She has published and presented, in academic and community spaces, on anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia, researcher reflexivity, immigrant workers’ experiences with racism in Ontario, and the importance of critical community service-learning. Ayesha was a 2017 Final Five SSHRC Storyteller for her contributions to an Ontario-wide cross-sectoral research partnership uncovering the gaps in employment standards enforcement. She also received the 2014 Alberta Hate Crimes Awareness Day Award for her work with the Edmonton Police Service to develop a hijab prototype to accompany the official uniform, along with a corresponding educational campaign.