Camisha Sibblis

Camisha Sibblis

Title/Position
Assistant Professor; Associate Director, Training & Education, INLIGHT
Sociology
  • Office Hours:
    MN6286
  • Mailing Address:

    3359 Mississauga Road
    Mississauga ON L5L 1C6
    Canada

Camisha Sibblis’ research is part of a broader effort across various disciplines (e.g. history, humanities, equity studies, philosophy, psychology, and education) to study identity, oppression and anti-oppressive alternatives. Her research uses spaciotemporal and critical race theories to focus on the anti-Black racism, the ubiquity of carcerality in Black life, and the politics of intersectional identity.  

Her most recent work explores how excluded Black youth are constructed in the education system and how carceral experiences within schooling effect identity formation. Furthermore, her work traces the manner in which different spaces throughout history have constructed the Black body as abject and have functioned as regulating sites of violence - thereby contributing to anti-Black racism as a theoretical framework.

She is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Windsor’s School of Social Work and she is the Co-Investigator of a project funded by a SSHRC Connections Grant entitled “Sealing the Leaky Pipeline: Constructing Mentorship Best Practices for Racialized Graduate Students in the Academy” (PI: Dr. Natalie Delia Deckard). She is the recipient of a Mitacs Acceleration Grant with the YMCA as the agency collaborator. Professor Sibblis was also a collaborator on a SSHRC Insight Development Grant entitled “Schools, Safety and the Urban Neighbourhood”, (PI: Dr. Naomi Nichols).

Professionally, Professor Sibblis has extensive experience working with youth deemed ‘at risk’ as a school social worker, child protection worker, and as a clinician assessing the affect of anti-Black racism on the lives and mental health of convicts for courts to consider upon sentencing. In particular, she wrote the “Morris Report” (R. v. Morris 2018 ONSC 5186) – the first Impact of Race and Culture Assessment report applied in a criminal sentencing of a Black defender in Ontario. Professor Sibblis has been a mental health practitioner in private practice, as well as a clinical agent for the Office of the Children’s Lawyer. Additionally, she is a contributor named on the Honourable Commissioner Judith C. Beaman’s Motherisk Commission report.

Professor Sibblis is also the Associate Director, Education & Training, of the INLIGHT Student Mental Health Research Initiative at the University of Toronto.

Specialization

  • Black Canadian Studies

  • Anti-Black Racism Theory

  • Post-colonial, Spatial, and Critical Race Theories

  • Systemic and Institutional Oppression

  • Critical Social Work

  • Mental Health and (Intergenerational) Trauma

  • Child Welfare and Development

  • Direct Clinical Practice/Anti-Oppressive Practice

  • Activism and Transformative Practice

  • Community Development

  • (Race, Gender, Queer, Intersectional) Identity Politics

  • Sociology of Education

Education
Ph.D. (York University)
M.S.W. (York University)
B.S.W. (hon.) (York University)
B.A. (Philosophy, University of Toronto)

Publications

De Shalit, Ann, Adrian Guta, Camisha Sibblis, Emily van der Meulen, and Jijian Voronka. 2022. "Police and Social Work Collaborations: Competing Professions of Oppression." In Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada, edited by S. Pasternak, K. Walby, and A. Stadnyk. Toronto, ON: Between the Lines Publishing.

Edwards, Travonne, Tanya L. Sharpe, Camisha Sibblis, Megan McPolland, Antonia Bonomo, and Jordan DeVylder. 2022. "Civilian Perceptions of Police: A Thematic Analysis of Non-Physical Encounters with Law Enforcement." Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2022.2106001

Sibblis, CamishaNatalie Delia Deckard, and Kemi Salawu Anazodo. 2022“The Colour of System Avoidance in Canada: Investigating the Importance of Immigrant Generation Among African Canadians.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologiehttps://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12407

Owusu-Bempah, Akwasi, Carl E. James, and Camisha Sibblis. 2018. “Expert Report on Crime, Criminal Justice and the Experience of Black Canadians in Toronto, Ontario.”            

Chambers, Lori, Sheila Cranmer-Byng, May Friedman, Meaghan Ross, Warimu Njoroge, Dawn Onishenko, Camisha Sibblis, Kristin Smith, and Andrea Westbrook. 2016. “Redefining Borders Between Communities and the Classroom: How Community-based Social Activists Can Transform Social Work Education. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning 1(2):77-95. https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v1i2.113

Sibblis, Camisha. 2014. “Expulsion Programs: Colonizing Spaces of Exception.” Race, Gender & Class 21(1-2):64-81.

Sibblis, Camisha. 2014. “Progressive Discipline, Regressive Education: An Examination of Racism in the Processes and Spaces of School Exclusion.” In Politics of Anti-Racism Education: In Search of Strategies for Pursuing Transformative Learning, edited by George J. Sefa Dei and Mairi McDermott. New York: Springer.

Other

Current Courses
SOC253H5, SOC446H5