Dr. Janelle Joseph is the Founder and Director of Canada's first research laboratory devoted to issues of race and movement cultures, the Indigeneity, Diaspora, Equity and Anti-racism in Sport (IDEAS) Research Lab. Dr. Joseph is a Connaught Scholar and elected member of the Royal Society of Canada, College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. Dr. Joseph is a co-founder of The Re-creation Collective an group of scholars, practitioners, policy makers, and knowledge holders working in sport, recreation, and movement cultures.
A leader in advancing social justice and anti-racism through physical culture research, the IDEAS Research Lab aspires to explore issues related to a wide range of global and local movement experiences. The IDEAS Research Lab is committed to transformational, theoretical, and ethnographic research using decolonial theory in sport, dance, and education.
Contact Janelle Joseph for more information.
Mission
The IDEAS Research Lab is devoted to leading sustainable, decolonizing, systemic change and to cultivating future leaders in physical activity and research. Our research is focused on using critical race theory and decolonial knowledges to generate and amplify storytelling about global indigeneity, diasporas, equity and anti-racism in sport, dance, physical activity, education and leadership. We aim to promote Black excellence, expose interlocking oppressions and privileges, and understand transnational networks.
Research Reports
A research study led by Dr. Janelle Joseph to discover the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) racial demographics, experiences and knowledge of racism, and tools for change.
In Awakening to elsewheres: Collectively restorying embodied experiences of (be)longing, The Re-Creation Collective, which Dr. Joseph co-leads, clarifies the ways mainstream sport erases our bodies/minds. We collectively elucidate the relationships between ongoing systems of oppression (e.g., settler colonialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, (neo)imperialism), while simultaneously demonstrating how we might use our experiences within these systems to imagine something new, something else, altogether
Read the article, watch a video poem, and visit the art of the 2022 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport article of the year award-winning research paper
Programming
Exploring Difference
This project, in partnership with Insight for Community Impact and Bureau Kensington, explores the following questions using movement: How do we think, learn, and lead with the body? How do we make collective sense of ourselves as colonizer and colonized and describe the impact on our bodies and daily lives? What opens up our tendency to rigidity and ignoring the complexity of multiple identities that exist within each of us?
Learning to Lead
This project, funded by the Women's Athletic Association Trust, aims to develop BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) womxn’s health and wellness. Through various pedagogies, students learn physical skills, cultural philosophies, leadership techniques, anti- racism, white supremacy, and healthy relationships.
Sister Insiders
Sister Insiders is a coterie for BIPOC womxn to share ideas and learn. Dr. Janelle Joseph offers a physical/virtual space for graduate students to connect, express themselves, learn from/about racialized scholars and also engage with some movement activities to enhance their overall academic pursuits.
Diversity Moves Us
The IDEAS Lab works in partnership with the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education’s Sport and Recreation Diversity and Equity team. Through student-staff-faculty partnerships initiatives that promote anti-racism, inclusivity and physical/mental health are promoted to the campus and broader communities. The IDEAS Lab assesses the meanings community members make from their participation.
SELECTED Funded Research Projects
Principal Investigator, Mobilizing Black Women's Leadership, Connaught Major Research Challenge for Black Researchers, $250,000
Co-Director, 'So what do we do now?': Moving intersectionality from academic theory to recreation-based praxis, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Race, Diversity, Gender Initiative $450,000
Principal Investigator, Racism and Equity Efforts in Canadian Inter-university Sport, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant $75,000
Co-Investigator, A People's History of Sport in Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant, $192,626
Principal Investigator, Movement as Health and Healing: Documenting the Sporting Experiences of Black Women, Girl, and Non-binary Athletes and Physical Educators in Canada, Gender Equity in Sport Research Hub Seed Grant $20,000
Staff
Lab Coordinator:
Aayah Amir, For lab inquiries please contact: ideas.kpe@utoronto.ca
Research Assistants (Last name, alphabetical):
- Deniece Bell, MSc candidate
- Asha Edwin, PhD candidate
- Zeana Hamdonah, PhD candidate
- Asma Khalil, PhD candidate
- Jasmine Lew, BSc candidate
- Saidur Rahman, PhD candidate
- Daniel Uy, PhD student
GRADUATE StUDENTS
- Shalom Brown (MSc) grad 2023
- Deniece Bell (MSc) grad 2024
Jasmine Lew (MSc) grad 2024
- Zeana Hamdonah (PhD) expected graduation 2026
- Asma Khalil (PhD) expected graduation 2025
- Jasmine Lew (PhD) expected graduation 2028
- Saidur Rahman (PhD) expected graduation 2025
- Daniel Uy (PhD) expected graduation 2027
SELECTED Recent Publications
Joseph, J. (accepted). Performing at the intersections: The decolonial politics of masquerade, music, and movement at a Caribbean-Canadian carnival. Journal of Emerging Sport Studies.
Joseph, J. (2024). Listen, Tell, Show: Recreation and the Black and Decolonial Storytelling in Sport and Physical Culture Research. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 48(1-2), 51-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/01937235241254116
Joseph, J., Pennock, K. & Brown, S. (2024). Black Hair is a Safe Sport Issue!: Black Aesthetics, Access, Inclusion, and Resistance. Sociology of Sport Journal.
Hamdonah, Z. & Joseph, J. (2024). Indigenous Dance, Cultural Continuity, and Resistance: A Netnographic Analysis of the Palestinian Dabke in the Diaspora, Media Culture and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437241228735
Joseph, J. & Bain, N. (2024). Leisure as Black Survival: Ballroom, Vogue and Black Queer and Trans+ Activism in Canada, Leisure/Loisir. https://doi.org/10.1080/14927713.2024.2308911
McKenzie, B., Joseph, J., & Razack, S.* (2023). Whiteness, Canadian university athletic administration, and anti-racism leadership: ‘A bunch of white haired, white dudes in the back rooms’ Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise, & Health, 16(2), 197-212, https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2023.2259397
Joseph, J. & McKenzie, A.I. (2022). Black Women Coaches in Community: Promising Practices for Mentorship in CanadaFront. Sports Act. Livinghttps://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2022.884239
McGuire-Adams, T., Joseph, J., Peers, D., Eales, L., Bridel, W., Chen, C., Hamdon, E., & Kingsley, B. (2022). Awakening to Elsewheres: Collectively Restorying Embodied Experiences of (Be)longing, Sociology of Sport Journal https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ssj/aop/article-10.1123-ssj.2021-0124/article-10.1123-ssj.2021-0124.xml
Joseph, J. & Kriger, D. (2021). Toward a Decolonizing Kinesiology Ethics Model. Quest 1-17, https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2021.1898996.
Joseph, J. & Kerr, E. (2021). Assemblages and Co-emergent Corpomaterialities in Postsecondary Education: Pedagogical Lessons from Somatic Psychology and Physical Cultures, Somatechnics, 11(3), 413-431. DOI: 10.3366/soma.2021.0368/
Joseph, J., Williams, B., & Lewis, T. (2021). The Exploring Difference Workshop: Adapting group relations to explore questions of difference and antiracism in Toronto, Canada. Organizational and Social Dynamics 21(1), 40-55.
Razack, S. & Joseph, J. (2020). Misogynoir in Women's Sport Media: Race, Nation and Diaspora in the Representation of Naomi Osaka. Media, Culture and Society. 43(2), 291-308. 10.1177/0163443720960919
