Nazmul Arefin awarded the 2024 Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Graduate Prize

Nazmul Arefin was awarded the Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Graduate Prize today, one of three awards across the entire university and it was presented today along with his other award: the Izaak Walton Memorial Scholarship.

The Dorothy J Killam Memorial Graduate Prizes were created in the fall of 2002 to honor the memory of Dorothy J Killam.  Three prizes are awarded annually to the most outstanding Killam Memorial Scholarship recipients.The recipients are selected based on academic achievement, research proposal, letters of recommendation, and leadership qualities.  Recipients receive a cash prize and a certificate acknowledging their award. The Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Graduate Prize is a testament to a graduate student’s academic achievement and research

Nazmul Arefin is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. An international student from Bangladesh, Arefin is interested in critical terrorism studies, radicalization, Islamophobia, policing, social justice and narrative criminology. Arefin’s work is supervised by Professor Temitope Oriola on whose research team he currently works as research assistant on a National Dorothy Killam Fellowship project, one of only eight awarded in Canada in 2023.

Given the rising climate of Islamophobia and right-wing extremism, Arefin’s study investigates the lived experiences of Muslim university students in Canada. This study expands knowledge about Muslim students’ experiences in higher education, institutional racism, identity struggles and responses to anti-Muslim racism and hate crimes. As the Senate of Canada engages in drafting an anti-Islamophobia bill following a report released in November 2023, Arefin’s research aims to provide vital granular data and grassroots policy recommendations for the nation-wide effort. The findings can help scholars and university policymakers take action on institutional Islamophobia and improve the efficacy of EDID policies in Canada and other liberal democracies.