Jennifer Adese

Jennifer Adese (otipemisiwak/Métis) holds a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Métis Women, Politics, and Community. Her research sits at the intersection of Indigenous Studies, as well as Métis Studies, Cultural Studies, Visual Sociology, and Critical Race Theory. Prior to joining UTM in 2018, Professor Adese was Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Indigenous Studies in the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University.

She is the author of Aboriginal™: The Cultural and Economic Politics of Recognition (2022) from University of Manitoba Press. The book project is a discursive analysis of the term “Aboriginal” and its rise to popular cultural and economic parlance in the wake of the 1982 Canadian Constitution’s entrenchment of Aboriginal rights. She is co-editor (with Dr. Chris Andersen) of A People and a Nation: New Directions in Contemporary Métis Studies (2021)(UBC Press) of the fully Métis authored volume devoted to examining the complexity of historical and contemporary Métis peoplehood and nationhood. In addition, she is co-editor (with Dr. Robert Alexander Innes) of Indigenous Celebrity: Entanglements with Fame (2021) (University of Manitoba Press), a first-of-its-kind multidisciplinary collection of chapters that speaks to the possibilities, challenges, and consequences of popular forms of recognition, while also engaging with Indigenous nation-specific understandings of both mainstream and Indigenous celebrity.

She is also the recipient of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant titled “‘No one else can speak for us’: Métis Women's Political Organizing, 1970s-Present” (2019-2022) examining Métis women’s experiences with and perceptions of Indigenous politics over the past 50 years. So is also a Co-Investigator (PI: Andrea Doucet, Brock University) on a large cross-institutional and organizational 7-year SSHRC Partnership Grant titled Reimagining Care/Work Policies, where she will contribute research on Métis women’s experiences with Canadian child care policies. Professor Adese was previously a Co-Investigator on a 2-year (2018-2020) cross-institutional CIHR grant titled “Ehawawisit (With Child): Maternal and Perinatal Health Outcomes among the Métis in Alberta and the Influence of Proximal, Intermediate, and Distal Determinants of Health.”

Professor Adese is currently in her third term as an Editorial Board Member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) journal.