Azeezah Kanji, Muslim Canadian settler; legal academic and journalist; Director of Programming, Noor Cultural Centre

Azeezah Kanji is a legal academic and writer.  She received her Juris Doctor from University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and Masters of Law specializing in Islamic Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.  Azeezah’s work focuses on issues relating to racism, law, and social justice.  Her writing has appeared in the Al Jazeera English, Haaretz, Toronto Star, TruthOut, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, OpenDemocracy, Roar Magazine, iPolitics, Policy Options, Rabble, and various academic anthologies and journals. Azeezah also serves as Director of Programming at Noor Cultural Centre.

Sascha Priewe, Co-Founder of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, Director of Collections & Public Programs at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.

Previously, Sascha was the Associate Vice President, Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships, and prior to that Managing Director – Culture Centres at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Before joining the ROM, he was the Curator of Chinese and Korean collections at the British Museum and served as a diplomat in the German Foreign Office. With a PhD in archaeology from the University of Oxford, his research has focused on Chinese art and archaeology, Korean art, museum studies and cultural diplomacy.

Sascha is currently cross-appointed as an Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Toronto, and is an Affiliated Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. He is also a Senior Fellow of Massey College and was a 2019-21 Research Fellow of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

He also serves as the Vice President of ICOM Canada, on the council of the Ontario Museum Association, and is the inaugural chairperson of the Global Leadership Council of the Idaho Museum of International Diaspora.