The Cassidy Centre for Educational Justice warmly invites you to attend the 2025-26 academic year’s Educational Justice Lecture, delivered by Dr. Sadiah Qureshi.
Dr. Qureshi’s lecture, titled Writing Histories of Extinction for Just Futures, will focus on the many narratives we craft to make sense of and wrestle meaning from extinction, and the many histories that go untold or are forgotten in this process. While ‘heroic’ scientists discovering lost species and formulating theories about their extinction remains the most common way we trace debates about extinction, Dr. Qureshi argues that “histories of extinction exploring the entangled roots of extinction, empire, and race in the making of the modern world are a valuable ethical endeavour that allow us to imagine and create a just future for all life on earth.”
Dr. Qureshi holds the Chair in Modern British History at the University of Manchester. Her research interests intersect on race, science, and empire-building in the modern world. Her first book, called Peoples on Parade: Empire and Anthropology in Nineteenth Century Britain (University of Chicago Press, 2011), examined human exhibitions in 19th c Britain, and the wider contributions of these exhibitions to public attitudes about race and racialized differences.
Her most recent book, Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction was published by Allen Lane/Penguin in 2025. In this work, Dr. Qureshi examines how histories of extinction are bound up in histories of empire and genocide. She was the winner of the 2025 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal by The Royal Society for excellence relating to the history of science, philosophy of science, or social function of science, and we are thrilled that she will be Visiting Scholar at the Cassidy Centre for Educational Justice between March 23-31, 2026.
Dr. Qureshi’s scholarship has great relevance for scholars and students of the social sciences and the social foundations of education. In particular, institutionalized discourses about racialized others in relation to empire-building is of central concern in educational studies of public pedagogy. And more so, the importance of understanding the role such discourses play in shaping how we (educators, students) learn about racialized others in contexts of empire and colonization.
The lecture will take place on March 24th, 2026 at SFU’s Halpern Centre. To view the event poster, click here. To reserve your spot, click here.
