Excerpt: In recognition of International Women’s Day, March 8, Canadian Immigrant presents our third annual “Immigrant Women of Inspiration” special — for 2016, we chose the theme of immigrant women in academia. More than just professors, we picked five women from across the country who are pushing boundaries in education, in their passionate pursuit of knowledge, ideas and change.

These brilliant PhDs have different areas of study, but they all have inspirational stories and much wisdom to share: Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, Shalina Ousman, Parin Dossa, Leonie Sandercock and Purnima Tyagi.

Dean Ananya Mukherjee-Reed in pursuit of justice

There aren’t too many immigrant women heading up university faculties in Canada, so it’s a notable achievement for Indian-born Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, who was appointed dean of Toronto-based York University’s faculty of liberal arts and professional studies last summer.

Mukherjee-Reed holds a bachelor of arts and master of arts in economics from Jadavpur University in Kolkata and a PhD in political economy and public policy from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She joined York University’s department of political science in 1995 as an assistant professor and later served as the department’s chair from 2011 to 2014.

Academia, you could say, is in her blood. Back home in Kolkata, her mother was also an academic and her grandfather, who retired from a senior position with the Indian government, built a school in a rural village, instilling in Mukherjee-Reed the importance of education for everyone.

“Kolkata is very well known for its academics. It’s a very culturally, politically and intellectually active city,” says Mukherjee-Reed. Growing up surrounded by the traditions of theatre, poetry and literature, Mukherjee-Reed was constantly engaged with political issues. “We were always taught to ask questions, not take anything at face value,” she says.

Serving others was also part of Mukherjee-Reed’s education. “My parents drilled into me that we were not only here to have a career and be successful, but to do something that served others,” she says.

“I went to an all-girls’ school, what we would probably now call a feminist school, but the message that we got is that we must develop an identity of our own. They very much encouraged us to have an identity, a sense of who we are, a great self-awareness so we could always have our feet firmly on the ground. And so no one can bully you into something you don’t want to do,” she says.

That strong sense of identity helped Mukherjee-Reed overcome the many challenges of being an immigrant in a new country where one’s identity is constantly being thrown into question. “I remained who I was in Kolkata, and that’s helped me through my journey,” she says.

Her strong feminist background also later shaped her studies in her chosen field of public policy. While on a sabbatical, after receiving her PhD, she went back to India and worked with one of the largest women’s movements in Asia. “It had around four million members who are women mostly from households below the poverty line,” explains Mukherjee-Reed.

This began a whole new field of study for Mukherjee-Reed on gender issues, social change, justice and sustainability. She became focused on investigating how political and institutional changes affected ordinary people, which then led her to co-found a research network at York called the International Secretariat for Human Development, a network that allows universities to pursue knowledge with the input and experiences of grassroots communities.

Some of the study areas she has focused on include justice for garment workers internationally, and its connection to policy gaps in countries like Canada, food justice and women’s solidarity movements in India, and women and patriarchy. “My teaching and research focus primarily on the theme of human development, broadly defined. The theme that dominates my current work is justice, particularly gender justice,” she notes.

Although Mukherjee-Reed has been successful as an academic, publishing two books and dozens of academic papers, she says she defines her success through the students whose lives she’s impacted. “When I hear students say, ‘I never thought I could do this,’ and I have some small part to play in them doing that, that is what gives me satisfaction,” she says.

Now, as York’s dean of the faculty of liberal arts and professional studies, Mukherjee-Reed looks forward to having the ability to provide students with a sense of empowerment, giving back what she gained as a young girl growing up in Kolkata. “I want students to be able to know for themselves that the four years that they’re spending here is a transformative experience and by getting an education they feel they can take on the world.” Read the Full Story from Canadian Immigrant magazine