Criminology professor Kerry Taylor earns U of T Teaching Fellowship

Kerry Taylor, an assistant professor at the Woodsworth College affiliated Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Science, has received a U of T Teaching Fellowship. This fellowship will allow Taylor to engage in academic projects that will benefit students, and studies will centre around a specific area of institutional priority. Each fellow receives $10,000 to hire graduate students as research assistants, and an additional $5,000 for professional development.

In her fellowship, Taylor will be bringing an Indigenous lens to criminology and sociolegal studies, using sociolegal and holistic methods and theories to teach students in the areas of penology/abolition, bioethics, human rights, Indigenous/settler relations and legal pluralism, interpersonal violence, immigration, and youth justice. Taylor’s fellowship will focus on the design of a fourth-year undergraduate course which expands upon her existing third-year offering, “Indigenous Peoples and Criminal Justice”. It will be structured around enhanced experiential and community-led learning and land-based pedagogy, which will offer students the opportunity to challenge their own understandings of about law, settler colonialism, crime, justice and Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Kerry has ongoing interests in using socio-legal methods and theories to study and teach in the areas of abolition-focused penology, bioethics, human rights and reconciliation, social/environmental justice, and food security. Through her fellowship, Taylor plans on developing relationships between Indigenous communities and U of T criminology and sociolegal studies students rooted in relevance, respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. Taylor hopes that students, by engaging in storytelling methodologies, will come to know about who they are, and what their responsibilities are towards this land and its original peoples. 

“I am grateful to be able to create an opportunity for experiential learning focused on uncovering and challenging the systemic gendered racism perpetuated against Indigenous Peoples by the Canadian state," says Taylor. "As a white settler academic, I hope to expand my own holistic teaching praxis to foster and value many ways of knowing and being."