Dr. Marika Kunnas
Assistant Professor
Arts-based Research
Bilingual/multilingual education
Critical intercultural studies
Critical literacies/pedagogies
Decolonizing pedagogies and knowledges
Drama/Theater education
French language education
Identity
Language ideologies
Race and antiracism
Teacher education
Storytelling/narrative inquiry
Biography
Marika Kunnas (she/her/elle) is an Assistant Professor in the department of Language and Literacy Education. She is a former secondary school French teacher in Ontario.
Her research specializes in French immersion programs and antiracism. Marika’s Master’s thesis (Inequities in black et blanc: Textual constructions of the French immersion student) investigated inequities in French immersion policies in Toronto and Ontario. Her dissertation focuses on racially minoritized students’ experiences in French immersion programs. Marika’s dissertation project (Monologues from the margins: Voices and experiences of racially minoritized French immersion students) received the Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship. Marika’s participants used counter-stories and monologues to communicate their experiences as racially minoritized students in French immersion in Ontario. The stories and monologues can be found on this website: https://mkunnas.wixsite.com/race-in-fi.
Through her research and as a teacher, Marika seeks to disrupt the status quo and make education more inclusive, equitable, antiracist, and anticolonial. Her research aims to explore the realities of being a racialized minority in French immersion, to give voice to POC students, and to engage in antiracist pedagogy with FSL teachers.
Broadly, Marika’s research interests lie within French, second/additional language acquisition, race, culture, decolonization, and equity.
Selected Publications
