Dr. Roshan Arah Jahangeer (she/her/elle/li)
Assistant Professor
Department of Social Justice and Community Studies
Saint Mary’s University
Ph.D., (Political Science), York University.
M.A., (Political Science), York University.
B.A. (Honours), Political Science and Psychology, Queen’s University.
Research Fellow in Islamophobia Studies, Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam, Carleton University.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Memorial University.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Office of Inclusion and Diversity, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.
Director of Research, Board Member, The Tessellate Institute.
Research Fellow, The Tessellate Institute.
I completed my Ph.D. in Political Science at York University and taught in both French and English at York University’s Glendon College. I was the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in Islamophobia in health professions education at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and was a Research Fellow in Islamophobia Studies at Carleton University’s Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam.
I have previously worked with community organizations such as the Canadian Council for Muslim Women and was a Research Director and Board Member at the Tessellate Institute, one of the first independent, non-profit research institutes that explored and documented the lived experiences of Muslims in Canada. I have also provided research consulting, both paid and unpaid, to the National Council of Canadian Muslims, Institut F, and the Ontario Public Service.
My research explores transnational Islamophobia through the circulation of anti-veiling laws between France and Québec and examines its impacts on Muslim women in the contexts of secularism, feminism, and migration. My current research, which was funded by a York University/CUPE 3903 Major Research Grant, investigates Muslim women’s ‘quiet flight’ from France and Quebec. Specifically, I examine their reappropriation of the practice of ‘hijra,’ the historic migration undertaken by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), in Western contexts. This research will be included as a new chapter in my upcoming monograph, which is under contract with the University of Toronto Press.
SJCS 1211 - Social Power Relations
SJCS 4824 - Global Islamophobia: Identity, Empire and Resistance
SJCS 2220 - Race, Racism, Colonialism
SJCS 4739 - Transnational Community Organizing
Jahangeer, R.A. (2026). “What the Olympic Hijab Ban Reveals About French Secularism,” in Jocelyne Cesari (ed.). The Wiley Companion to Religion, Politics and Nations. Wiley, 233-246.
Jahangeer, R.A. (2025). “Good Islam, Bad Islam? Secularism, Separatism, and Islamophobia in France,” in Secularism, Race, and the Politics of Islamophobia. Ed. Sharmin Sadequee. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 167-191.
Jahangeer, R.A., Whitehead, C., & Najeeb, U. (2024). “The conditional inclusion of Muslims in medicine: Intersectional experiences of Muslim medical students at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine from 1887-1964.” Canadian Medical Education Journal 15 (5): 7-19. https://doi.org/10.36834/cmej.78134
Jahangeer, R.A. (2022). “Fieldworking While Veiled: Autoethnography of a Brown + Muslim + Female Researcher in Québec,” in Producing Islam(s) in Canada: On Knowledge Production, Positionality and Politics. Eds. Jennifer Selby, Melanie Adrian and Amélie Barras. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 241-260.
Jahangeer, R.A. (2020). “Anti-veiling and the Charter of Québec Values: ‘Native Testimonials,’
Erasure, and Violence Against Montreal’s Muslim Women.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 32 (1): 114-139. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjwl.32.1.05
Jahangeer, R.A. and Vandasaria, S. (2014) “Introduction - Violence in a Far Country: Other Women’s Lives,” in At the Limits of Justice: Women of Colour on Terror. Eds. Suvendrini Perera and Sherene Razack. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 210-215.