About our guest speaker

​Dr. Sunita Nigam is a settler academic of mixed Indian, Serbian, Irish, and British ancestry. She grew up on unceded W8benaki territory in the Eastern Townships. She holds a Ph.D. in English from McGill University and completed a 2-year SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Theatre & Performance Studies at York University in 2021. Dr. Nigam has published on the racial, gender, and class dimensions of performance in Quebec and Mexico, including stand-up comedy, blackface minstrelsy, burlesque, activist theatre, and urban design campaigns. Beyond her academic work, Sunita works as a consultant in the community sector across Quebec.

We would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, York University, and the Hemispheric Encounters Project (Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas) for supporting her work on Black Histories in the Eastern Townships.