Identity: Dialoguing with the Other and Myself
Podcasts
Identity and blended origins
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Identity-Latinx physician, LGBTQI+ healthcare advocate, migrant
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Identity - Third Culture Kid and Expat
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Identity - Influence of Social Media
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Identity - Women leaders in STEM and Global Health
Episode Description:
Welcome to our podcast on "Identity and Blended Origins." We are speaking today with Devon and Leila who are cousins who between them are of Swiss, Polish, East Indian, Dutch, Russian and Canadian descent carrying Canadian, French and Swiss passports. They speak to us about their experience as blended people and how place, geography, physical appearance and multicultural policies among other factors influence the way they are perceived and how they perceive themselves. Devon and Leila will share their common experiences but also how these experiences differed growing up in Canada, France and the UK and tips on what it really takes to understand their identity.
Join us for this in-depth conversation.
Episode Description:
Dr. Juan Román Mora is a Latinx Nicaraguan Physician, LGBTQI+ health care advocate and immigrant. He speaks to us about practicing in a heteronormative patriarchal system and how his identity and compassion speaks to communities that are underserved. He also discusses how the migrant identity exposes people to different health risks and how as a migrant physician he can identify the needs of this population. Finally, he impresses the importance of listening to yourself to understand your true identity.
Episode Description:
Dr. Anna Marie Ball is a Canadian Behavioural Scientist that has had an illustrious career in international development spending much of her time in Africa. She discusses the influence of growing up in Zambia in Africa as a white Canadian third culture kid and later her role as an expat has had on her identity and sense of belonging. She tells us of the realization that she couldn’t be Zambian because in part of her colour and her campaign to understand Canada as the country she was told she was from to understand her identity. Finally, she talks about belonging as not just being from a place but being made up of relations, feelings and experiences.
Episode Description:
Naviya from Nepal, Fang Fang from Spain and Sara from Ecuador discuss the impact that social media has on identity. Coming from different parts of the planet they show how algorithms shape identity constantly reenforcing images and messages but also how the iterative process of engaging with it influences your sense of power, responsibility and self worth. Although social media can create a sense of community to identify with, it does not represent the actual reality out in the world creating a trap for your identity in the limited reality of SM. We have a love/hate relationship with SM where we try to avoid it but are constantly drawn to it to reenforce our identity and sense of belonging. Naviya, Sara and Fang Fang leave us with an important message which is to constantly explore our larger identity outside of social media as the world is much larger than it.
Episode Description:
Dr. Dominique Charon has had an illustrious career as an epidemiologist, veterinarian in international development and as a leader in STEM and Global Health. She is the outgoing vice president of research and programmes at the International Development Research Centre in Canada. She speaks to us about the importance of having women in decision-making roles and in board rooms but also that it is not enough. She says a diversity of perspectives is important including all of society approach to make good decisions and ask the right questions in STEM and global health problem solving. Dominique also explores the role of a mother as a scientist and how structural changes need to be made in order to support scientific career trajectories in spite of the demands of motherhood.
Episode Description:
John Moses is an Indigenous Canadian and member of the Delaware and Upper Mohawk bands from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory and Director of Repatriation and Indigenous Relations at the Canadian Museum of History. He speaks to us about reclaiming today’s indigenous identity the historical nature and legal relevance of the term “Indian” under Canadian administrative frameworks, the matrilineal nature of some bands, systems of spirituality mixing Christian and indigenous traditional practices and the austere and harrowing conditions of residential schools that generations of his family have endured.
Episode Description:
Anaelle grew up in France and studied Postcolonial theory in the United Kindgom. She devoted her time to researching her family's Jewish heritage and memories from the Middle East. She aimed for these memories to be integrated into the wider and local post-colonial imaginaries. She hopes to better understand herself in relation to her own perspectives through this research. In this podcast, she takes you through the geopolitics of the Middle East, Western Politics and the role of Colonialism in the history of Sephardi Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal until the 15th century upon which they were expelled during the Spanish Inquisition and fled to North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and Turkey and now can be found all over the world.
Episode Description:
Flora Kakanou is a French young professional of Cameroonian descent who studied science and is currently a business consultant in pharma. She believes that taking control of your identity is a mindset that gives the opportunity to others to learn from your experience and how that lets one not be defined by skin colour but as a whole person who can surpass any obstacles.
Episode Description:
Dr. Shukti Chaudhuri -Brill is a linguistic anthropologist who has worked extensively with the Roma and immigrant communities in Europe. She provides us with an understanding of identity from an anthropological perspective drawing on the notions of ascribed and versus achieved identities. Identity she says is at one moment ascribed to us at birth and yet another is constantly being created and performed. The role of groups and communities in defining ourselves to either confirm or challenge our sense of identity is also discussed.
Episode Description:
Dr. Susan Perry, a Professor at the American University of Paris and Director of Graduate Studies in International Affairs and Human Rights, discusses the role identity plays in global conflict drawing examples from global conflicts and the Ukrainian conflict in particular. She speaks about how the NATO alliance identity plays a role in the conflict and how a dynamic definition of identity can contribute to resolving conflict while providing us with some tools to work with.
Episode Description:
Winnie and Manisha are young professionals who discuss their journey of exploring gender concluding that living in the absence of gender and a non-binary world gives them freedom and a safe space to live their authentic selves where the queer community has given them an anchor to express themselves and a feeling of belonging. They explore definitions and the role of language in understanding how gender binaries create biases that exclude people in everyday life, research, and access to adequate health care. Finally, they send an important message to those who are on their gender discovery to stay positive and for those of us who are trying to understand these new ways of being to listen and learn.
Episode Description:
Lamia is a professional woman living in the UK, born in the UAE carrying a Jordanian passport with roots in Palestine and Syria. She tells us about her rich heritage coming from Levantine as a woman but also the complicated nature of borders, passports and identity. She tells us what it means to be Palestinian and the story of what she has been told of where she is from and her ability to live amongst everyone in peace.
Episode Description:
Alexander is a Russian, Israeli, Italian national who identifies above all as a human among all humans having the privilege to be a father. He is also Jewish and an atheist which for him is not a contradiction. He explores how speaking and living in the script of various languages allows him to assume various aspects of those identities enabling him to not be afraid of the other. He tells us how coming from two countries that are at war is a painful experience as all human life be it friend or enemy is unique. He posits that populism, post-truth, and polarization have created extremes where people’s identities have become entrenched creating conflict which has been exacerbated by the media. He believes that it is not necessarily because of one’s identity that the other must be a foe.
Episode Description:
Marc, an art history student in Paris, talks about his evolving understanding of his identity as a gay man from a conservative French bourgeois family. While the conservative bourgeois family insists on certain codes that can be associated with privilege and intolerance, Marc's identity has made the most of the family's love and acceptance in this context. He also explains that it's reductive to consider homosexuality as an identity in itself, as a person's identity is much broader than this single identifier, and warns that this leads to putting all homosexuals in a box, when their identities are as varied and complex as there are people. Marc suggests that assuming one's identity in all its complexity means not excluding others in their journey.
Episode Description:
Nahile is a young professional of French and Moroccan origin who, she believes, cannot be quantified as a single identity, but rather as a plurality and a whole. For her, being French is a combination of feelings, emotions, memories and attachment to the French values of liberty, equality, fraternity and secularism, which she hopes will apply to all French people despite their different origins. She says, however, that this hope has not been fully realized, given the contradiction that exists in French society.
Episode Description:
Ellen Lee is a Canadian born designer of Chinese
descent who explores multiple aspects of her identity that she has created from a blank page as a piece of art. She tells us that the Canadian Ellen afforded her the freedom to create an identity of what she wants to be while also being able to maintain the Chinese person (Kit Yee) because it is what people see on the outside. As an athlete and artist among many aspects of her identity she struggled with traditional Chinese expectations of being a serious person. As an artist who expresses feelings and spirituality she is considered vulnerable meaning less chances of her survival. For Ellen, fortunately, being Canadian as an identity gives her the flexibility and hope to be who she really wants to be.