The UTM Office of the Vice-Principal Academic and Dean has recently profiled Professor Susila Gurusami as part of their #MeetTheNewProfs series. Professor Gurusami joined the department this fall after completing her doctorate at UCLA and a Chanceller's Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Riverside. Professor Gurusami conducts research that focuses on gender, race, punishment and state governance. She is currently in the process of writing a book that examines the lives of previously incarcerated Black women at a transitional home in Los Angeles.
The full news story can be viewed on UTM's sociology page here.
We have posted an excerpt below.
Susila Gurusami is delighted to be kicking off her academic career at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
“I am just so taken with the University of Toronto,” she says. “The sociology department here is one of the largest in the world in terms of breadth of scholarship. A lot of scholars I’ve engaged with in the work I’m doing are based here.
“There is an openness to what sociology is and what rigorous scholarship looks like, which is lovely. UTM really seemed, in so many ways, what I had dreamed academic life could be. It was an opportunity I just couldn’t turn down.”
Gurusami, who grew up and earned her degrees in the United States, conducts research that focuses on gender, race, punishment and state governance. “The racial context in Canada has expanded my sensibilities about what race, control and sovereignty look like,” she says.
She is in the midst of writing a book that examines the lives of previously incarcerated Black women at a transitional home in Los Angeles. “I am trying to amplify voices that are not well represented. Their experiences, given their race and gender, tell us a lot about how the state governs, and reflect problems we all should notice.”