Meet the 2 new activists-in-residence at the University of Guelph

Being an activist-in-residence is "a new approach to what we traditionally think of as research," says Marsha Hinds Myrie, one of two people named to the role at the University of Guelph this year.

"In research we have these experts, who are based in the university, and who have been writing about an issue and theorizing about an issue and that brings them their standing, " Hinds Myrie said in an interview on CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris.

Activists-in-residence, though, "our standing comes from the fact that we're working actively with community," she said.

"We are the people who get in the weeds, as it were. We don't mind the messy and the complicated of actually working with people who are experiencing particular issues, and trying to turn their understanding of their lives into into something that makes sense, into some kind of meaning."

Hinds Myrie and Nneka MacGregor were announced as the university's two new activists-in-residence on Feb. 1. This is the second year the university has run the program.

Hinds Myrie began her career at the university as a postdoctoral fellow on the president's gender equity committee, and for 23 years has worked to develop an advocacy model "to address the issues of underprivileged groups of women in Barbados and the Commonwealth Caribbean," the university said in a media release.

MacGregor is co-founder and executive director of the Women's Centre for Social Justice, also known as WomenattheCentrE. She's also an expert advisory panel member of the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, and is the founder and managing partner of Nneka & Co, a consulting company for workplaces.

LISTEN | Meet the 2 activists-in-residence named by University of Guelph:

MacGregor said the activist-in-residence role is important because they work to provide a "bridge between social justice work and the theory that oftentimes happens in academia."

"Academia is seen oftentimes as this very lofty and distant elitist space," she said. "Activists-in-residence are the individuals who are doing the grassroots, the groundwork, and are able to bridge that gap and bring what the community is seeing as a need ... into the academic space, and then bring the academic space back into the community."

The activist-in-residence program was founded in 2022, and is based at the university's Grounded & Engaged Theory (GET) Lab. The inaugural activist-in-residence was migrant worker advocate Gabriel Allahdua, who was in the role until the end of August 2023.

Monique Deveaux, professor in the university's College of Arts and co-founder of the GET lab, said the first year of the activist-in-residence was a success.

"He did a number of things in the year that he was at Guelph," she said of Allahdua. "He spoke in a lot of undergraduate classes and graduate classes, introducing students to the kind of engaged activism that he does, and the issues around migrant worker justice."

Allahdua also organized a conference that brought together migrant justice activists and researchers, and inspired students who have continued to work as volunteers with migrant worker justice organizations, Deveaux said.