SACKVILLE, NB — El Jones will speak at Mount Allison University as part of the 2022-23 President’s Speakers Series (PSS) this month. Jones’s presentation, Abolitionist Intimacies, also the title of her forthcoming book, will take place both in-person and online on Wednesday, Nov. 23 at 7 p.m. in Crabtree Auditorium, 49A York Street on campus. All welcome, masks are required to attend in-person.
 
“We are excited to welcome El Jones to campus as part of this year’s President’s Speakers Series,” says Dr. Jennifer Tomes, chair of the PSS and Dean of Science. “Her work, in writing, academia, and activism, is inspiring and I know students from all areas of study as well as community members will walk away from her presentation with new insights and observations about themselves and our society.”
 
El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She teaches at Mount Saint Vincent University, where she was named the 15th Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies in 2017. She was Halifax’s Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She is the author of Live from the Afrikan Resistance!, a collection of poems about resisting white colonialism. Her work focuses on social justice issues, such as feminism, prison abolition, anti-racism and decolonization. Since 2016, she has co-hosted a radio show called Black Power Hour, on CKDU-FM where listeners from prisons call in to rap and read their poetry, providing a voice to people who rarely get a wide audience.
 
Jones’s talk is co-sponsored by the Botsford-Westmorland Lecture Fund. The annual President’s Speakers Series at Mount Allison University brings noted speakers from across Canada and around the globe to campus to address issues of current interest or importance. 

This is a hybrid event with in-person and online access through Microsoft Teams. See mta.ca/pss for more information and link to online presentation (note: you must register prior to the event date to receive a Teams invitation).