Camisha Sibblis

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