Ahmed Allahwala - Workshop: Reflecting on Power and Knowledge for Inclusive Teaching 

Ahmed Allahwala is Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, in City Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC). Dr. Allahwala holds an MA from Freie Universität Berlin, an MEd from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Political Science from York University in Toronto. He has taught a wide variety of courses in Germany and Canada on topics including welfare state analysis, immigration and settlement, city politics, community-based research, and urban planning. His pedagogical innovations in experiential learning and community-university partnerships have been recognized both nationally and internationally. He was the recipient of the Government of Canada Award (International Council for Canadian Studies) and a teaching fellow at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies in Berlin. In 2020, Professor Allahwala received the UTSC Teaching Award in the Associate/Full Professor category.

Amanda Binns - NEW Talk:
Student-Led Environments and Transformative Education

Amanda Binns is a clinician, researcher, and educator in the field of Speech-Language Pathology. She draws from her interprofessional clinical experiences to inform her research and to influence and support best practice in the field of Speech-Language Pathology. In her role at Holland Bloorview, she is currently clinical lead of an innovative virtual student-led environment that is working in partnership with clinicians, families and autistic children in Northern Ontario. (https://ipe.utoronto.ca/SLED-VAST). Her program of research examines social communication programs and their effectiveness and incorporates both practice-based research and implementation science. This research program is the result of over 15 years of experience working as a speech-language pathologist providing supports for neurodiverse children and their families. Her work is designed to co-create knowledge with clinicians, families and patients and aims to: improve Speech and Language services by optimizing them to fit child, family and system needs, and increase system wide adoption of compassionate and evidence-based services. She has presented to and worked with professionals, parents and policy makers, locally, across North America and internationally.

Anne McGuire - Workshop: Beyond the Universal: Nurturing Pedagogies of Collective Access 

Anne McGuire is an associate professor and director of the program for Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity at UofT, where she teaches courses in critical disability studies. She is the author of War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence (2016, University of Michigan Press), which received the 2016 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities. She is the co-author of an award-winning picture book about disability justice and collective access, We Move Together (AK Press, 2021). Anne received the 2016 June Larkin Pedagogy Award and the 2018-2019 UofT Early Career Teaching Award for her work advancing collective access in the university classroom.

Jennifer Esmail - Worshop: Reflecting on Power and Knowledge for Inclusive Teaching 

Jennifer Esmail has worked in a range of academic and community spaces and now bridges these spheres in her work as Director of the Centre for Community Partnership at the University of Toronto. She was previously Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she taught as part of the Walls to Bridges prison co-learning program. Dr. Esmail has published in areas including community-university engagement, Disability Studies, and English literature, including her prize-winning monograph, Reading Victorian Deafness (2013). Dr. Esmail was awarded the John Charles Polanyi Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researchers for her research in Disability Studies. She has been involved with a number of community organizations in Ontario, including sitting on the Board of Directors of The Children's Book Bank and the Advisory Board of the Enabling Nonprofits project of the Ontario Nonprofit Network. Jennifer's identity and lived experience as a disabled woman of color, a settler and uninvited guest on this land, and a first generation post-secondary student inform her commitment to anti-oppressive, anti-racist and anti-colonial approaches to education.

Latika Nirula - Roundtable: Tensions and Critically Reflexive Considerations related to EDI teaching through Simulation

Latika Nirula, PhD, is the Director of the Centre of Faculty Development, after serving previously as the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health's (CAMH) inaugural Director of Simulation and Teaching Excellence. Latika has led a number of significant initiatives to advance faculty development across the health system, and her accomplishments include: leading in the development diverse education training programs locally and in the community, creating faculty development a programming to recognize and support teachers across the health professions, and collaborating in the development of customized faculty development programming internationally. She has led innovative digital learning initiatives for health-care providers focused on knowledge translation and exchange. Latika is also an experienced curriculum designer and facilitator of faculty development programming, with special interests in applying simulation-based education and diverse program evaluation approaches to her work. She is highly-rated teacher, who is deeply committed to supporting faculty in enhancing their own teaching skills, exemplified by her approach to coaching. Latika's research interests include faculty development to support simulation-based learning, applying EDIA principles in simulation design, patient and family involvement in health professions education, and the role of coaching in faculty development.

Lindsay Beavers - Roundtable: Tensions and Critically Reflexive Considerations related to EDI teaching through Simulation

Clinical Practice Facilitator, Ontario Internationally Educated Bridging Program, Dept. of Physical Therapy, University of Toronto
Lindsay (she/her) is a passionate queer physiotherapist and educator who has worked in various leadership, operational, education, and clinical roles in both hospital and academic settings over the past 16 years. Lindsay was the inaugural Simulation Lead for the Ontario Internationally Educated Physical Therapy Bridging Program and teaches in the Masters Program's Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural (SPEC) curriculum in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto. Lindsay has an undergraduate in Kinesiology from the University of Waterloo, and a Masters of Physiotherapy from the University of Western Ontario. She has won multiple education and leadership awards, including the 2019 Ivy Oandasan Leadership Award from Centre for Interprofessional Education, the 2021 Temerty Award for Excellence in Professional Values, and the 2015 Exceptional Achievement Awards (Education) from the Physical Therapy Department at the University of Toronto. Lindsay's current research interests include simulation for health professions education, and systems of oppression that impact physiotherapy education and practice, with a focus on the 2SLGBTQIPA+ health. Her social locations are as a white settler, middle class, able-bodied, cisgender, queer woman.

Niki Soilis - Roundtable: Tensions and Critically Reflexive Considerations Related to EDI Teaching Through Simulation

Niki Soilis is the Education Manager at the Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning (SCSIL) at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS). She is responsible for the educational activities within the SCSIL, leading their design, organization, implementation and evaluation. She is a seasoned education specialist with experience building patient-centered and socially conscious simulations that explore the holistic picture of the patient through their life path, including their emotional and physical journey within the health care system. Along with Dr. Farhan Bhanji, she co-founded the Simulation on a Social Mission (SoSM) initiative within McGill's FMHS, bringing experts in public health, social accountability, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and transformational learning paradigms together to promote critical reflection and action towards social justice in simulation-based education. Furthermore, Niki seeks to broaden the reach of simulation and interactive learning across the continuum of care by developing programs that educate patients, their families, and the communities being served.

Penny Jane Burke - Transforming Pedagogical Timescapes Through Social Justice Praxis (Keynote paired in dialogue with Rania El Mugammar)

Professor Penny Jane Burke is UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and Higher Education and Director of the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) at the University of Newcastle. She is passionately committed to mobilising higher education as a vehicle of social justice and has developed POEMs (Praxis-based, Pedagogical, Ethically-oriented Methodologies) as a way to open time and space to do equity differently. Her personal experience of returning to study via an Access to Higher Education program has fuelled her deep commitment to generating social justice research with impact, firmly located in social justice principles. An influential scholar and practitioner, Penny is co-editor of the Bloomsbury book series on gender and education, was executive editor of Teaching in Higher Education (2010 - 2020), received the Higher Education Academy's highly competitive National Teaching Award (2008) and was an expert member of the Australian government's Equity in Higher Education Panel (2020-2021) and Equity Research & Innovation Panel (2018-2020). She has published widely in the field and her books include Accessing Education, Reconceptualising Lifelong Learning: Feminist Interventions, The Right to Higher Education, Changing Pedagogical Spaces in Higher Education and, most recently, Gender in an Era of Post-Truth Populism. She also holds honorary positions at the University of Bath, as Global Chair of Social Innovation, and the University of Exeter, as honorary professor.

Rania El Mugammar - Keynote paired in dialogue with Penny Jane Burke

Sacha Agrawal - Roundtable: Tensions and Critically Reflexive Considerations Related to EDI Teaching Through Simulation

Sacha Agrawal is a psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, where he works with individuals with severe mental illness, as part of two flexible assertive community treatment teams. He is also an education leader and scholar. His academic interests include critical pedagogy and the involvement of service users in psychiatric education.