Dr. Kisha McPherson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Communication (ProCom). She is an educator and scholar with over 15 years of research and teaching experience in social justice education, critical race, and cultural studies. Dr. McPherson completed her Ph.D. in the Faculty of Education at York University (2019). Her dissertation focused on the intersectional identities and experiences of Black girls in the Greater Toronto Area. With a continued focus on media and Black communities, Dr. McPherson uses community-based approaches to develop interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the impact of media, popular culture, and contemporary representations of Blackness on the identity and education of Black youth. Dr. McPherson grounds her work within a variety of Black feminist approaches to center anti-oppressive pedagogies and research approaches, which support effective and sustainable teaching and learning practices in both formal and informal educative spaces.
Dr. McPherson's current research projects include one focused on Black girls and new media participation. This study explores the experiences of Black girls who engage online and actively resist and respond to online representations of Blackness. It examines methods of activity ranging from creating and curating specific content, dreaming of worlds within Black imaginaries, to manipulating various social media platforms to control online environments. Dr. McPherson’s work aims to connect with contemporary media discourses including, social platforms, cultural appropriation, and Black cyberfeminism, with education.
Research Interests
Black feminist scholarship - using Black feminist epistemologies, I explore topics and issues related to cultural studies and media studies, to contextualize experiences of Black youth on topics within these fields.
Interdisciplinary education - as a trained educator, my research often intersects with education. Focusing on generally on youth, education, media, and culture, often converge and overlap as areas of focus in research on youth communities.
Community engaged scholarship - focusing on the experiences of Black people in my research, I use community based and embedded methods for research practices and analysis, which centre on the voice and priorities of community members on the central topic and issues.
Articles:
Kisha McPherson. (2021). Are We Free To Go? Anti-Black Racism and its Impact on Play. American Journal of Play. 13(2 and 3)
Kisha McPherson. (2020). Black girls are not magic; they are human: Intersectionality and inequity in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) schools. Curriculum Inquiry.
Book Chapters:
Black Girls in White Spaces: Identity, intersectionality and the Perpetual Search for Humanity. (In Press) N. Wane, J. Brady, & E. Odozor. In My Sisters’ House – Black Feminisms in Canada and Beyond.
Kisha McPherson. (2020). We Need a Seat at the Table”: Black Girls Using New Media to Construct Black Identity.Aria S. Halliday. The Black Girlhood Studies Collection. : 235-256.
Published, Women's Press
Presentations:
October 2021 - Canadian Perspectives: Navigating the margins of Black girl geographies. Locating the Geographies of Black Girlhoods in Education. Virtual Conference Black Girlhood Education Research Collective (BGERC) and American Educational Research Association (AERA), Virtual, United States
June 2021 - Black Girls and the Impact of Adultification Bias in a Canadian Context. Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Virtual, Canada
April 2019 - Educating Black Girls. Black Feminist Pedagogy and the Oppositional Gaze. Global Girlhoods: From Imaginings to Embodied Experiences (Keynote). Department of Thematic Studies – Child Studies, Linköping University, Sweden.