Afua Cooper is a Jamaican-Canadian multidisciplinary scholar, author, and artist. Her 13 books range across such genres as history, poetry, fiction, and children’s literature. Her indomitable research on slavery, and Black history has made her one of the leading figures in Black Canadian studies, and the authority on Canadian slavery. Additional areas of expertise include women’s history, race and gender, public history, abolitionism, freedom, and emancipation, Caribbean Studies, and Black literature and orature. Her book on Canadian slavery, The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montreal broke new ground in the study of Canadian and Atlantic slavery and was named by the CBC as one of the best books published in Canada. Angelique was also nominated for the Governor General’s award in non-fiction. Her two YA fiction books, My Name is Henry Bibb: A Story of Slavery and Freedom, and My Name is Phillis Wheatley: A Story of Slavery and Freedom, published by Kids Can, Press have won national and international prizes. She has curated and co-curated nine exhibits on Black history and culture.
Afua Cooper has put Black Studies on the map. Inspired by the desire to transform education by applying an equity and diversity lens to curricular development, at Dalhousie University, she conceptualized the Black Studies minor, and introduced it as part of the university’s curriculum in 2016. This Black Studies minor is the first of its kind in Canada. She is now at the leadership helm in creating the first Black and African Diaspora Studies BA program in Canada. This will be launched in Sept. 2023. Further, Afua Cooper has ensured the infrastructural development of Black studies by founding and launching the Black Canadian Studies Association, a national network of scholar who are engaged in creating Black studies epistemologies. Afua’s engagement with Black studies, anti-racism, EDI, and epistemic disruptions in the Canadian academy has made her not only a national figure but an international one as well.
A celebrated poet, Afua is a founder of the Dub Poetry Movement in Canada. In 2020 she was Awarded the Portia White Prize, Nova Scotia’s highest recognition for the arts. She is also the winner of the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award for her poetry book Black Matters. Afua Cooper was the Poet Laureate of Halifax for the 2108-2020 term. She has made audio recordings of her poems, which have been included in national and international literary and audio anthologies. Her latest book of poetry, The Halifax Explosion, is set to be released by PlumLeaf press in 2023.
She led the “Universities Studying Slavery” initiative at Dalhousie University and was the lead author of the subsequent report Lord Dalhousie’s History on Slavery and Race. These initiatives revealed the connections between the Canadian academy and the Atlantic slaving systems. Afua Cooper was a Fellow at the Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, where she conducted research on slavery and higher education, and was part of an international cohort of scholars engaged in similar work. In 2021, Prof. Cooper was appointed as the Canadian representative for UNESCO’s International Scientific Committee Slave Route Project, whose main objectives is to conduct research on the Transatlantic slavery system and its legacies. Additionally, she is the Principal Investigator for A Black People’s History of Canada, a one-million-dollar, Canadian Heritage funded project, designed to conduct research in Black Canadian history, and write curricula for grades K-12.
Afua Cooper holds a Killam Research Chair at Dalhousie University where she teaches in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Recipient of numerous honours and awards, including the Bob Marley Prize, several grants from SSHRC, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Award, and a nomination for the Premier of Ontario Excellence in the Arts Award. For her work in and contributions to poetry, culture, education, history, EDI, research, and scholarship she was honoured by Essence Magazine as one of the 25 Women who are Shaping the World, by Maclean’s as one of the 50 most influential Canadians, by Simon Fraser with an honorary doctorate of letters, and the Royal Society of Canada with the J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal.