CJS Professor Jacqueline Benn-John Completes PhD Dissertation

(Re)defining Feminist Resistance, Activism and Empowerment in Rape Crisis Centres: Black Women’s Perspectives and Implications for Education  

Tags: Vol. 1, Issue 3, March 2021

Jacqueline Benn-John is a professor in the Community Justice Services Program at Humber. She is an African/Black Diasporic, cisgender woman, mother and survivor. She has recently completed a PhD from Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Jacqueline’s doctoral research, (Re)defining Feminist Resistance, Activism & Empowerment in Rape Crisis Centres: Black Women's Perspectives & Implications for Education, sought to reveal and understand African/Black women’s embodied experiences, perspectives on feminist organizing and contributions to the anti-rape movement in Ontario, Canada. In Jacqueline’s work, particular attention is paid to the multifaceted and intersectional modes in which African/Black women express resistance.  
 
Jacqueline’s Masters research interrogates value systems and practices that serve to colonize African/Black women within Canadian spaces. This prior work recognizes the salience of race, particularly acknowledging how African/Black women are impacted differently by race and gender oppression than are African/Black men and White women. This work critically examined the notion of decolonization and identified concrete strategies to assist African/Back women in their own decolonization journeys.   

Jacqueline has been teaching for the past 13 years across the greater Toronto area. Since 2012, Jacqueline has taught in the Community and Justice Services Programs at Humber; she formerly taught at George Brown College in the Assaulted Women’s and Children’s Counsellor/ Advocate Program for 12 years.   

Jacqueline is a community engaged educator. She has over 25 years of grassroots and professional work experience in the gender-based violence sector and anti-rape movement.   

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