The interview was conducted by undergraduate research assistant Fyza Azam.
Fyza Azam: Could you tell me what you currently do or study?
Sam Ikueze: I am currently doing my PhD in English and Cultural Studies. I am in my second year, and I’m very interested in environmental studies, specifically from an African perspective, looking at the impact of multimedia, art installations, novels, and poems.
Fyza Azam: What is/was your role as a research assistant in the Racialized Ecologies Project?
Sam Ikueze: I work directly with Dr. Susie O’Brien, and we’ve done multiple projects together. For example, together with Zahra Tootonsab, we co-edited a special issue titled “Overburden: Reading/Imagining Extra-Canadian Ecologies” for Canada Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies. The issue has successfully been published now, and I have my first solo publication in it. I edited the introduction to “Reckoning, Repairing, Reworlding: The (In)humanities, Artistic Practices, and Planetary Crisis.” In this project, I went through the recorded Zoom meeting to ensure that the transcription correctly captured the authors’ intentions and ideas. I also participated in a few conferences and a retreat in my role as a research assistant. For instance, I attended the 2024 Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALLECC) Conference. The conference provided me with invaluable material for developing my paper, “Canada, International Students, and Fragility.” I also presented this paper at the 2025 Canadian Association of Postcolonial Studies (CAPS) Conference.
Fyza Azam: Are there any specific skills that you learned working as an RA that have been useful in your own studies, or in your professional work?
Sam Ikueze: Yes. I’ve learned a lot. Reading and writing are what we do, and as a research assistant, I have been doing that a whole lot: working, reading a ton of material, synthesizing, and also being able to write a paper for publication. It has given me the opportunity to write an original article as a solo writer, and it’s also broadened my view of the research I want to do in my PhD study. I have learned a lot from the mechanisms of writing to the workings of journal publication, and everything in between. Just working in a team that actually thinks together and researches together has given me a whole lot that I can use for the rest of my career as a student, and even as a researcher in the future.
Fyza Azam: Do/did your own studies intersect with the topic of Racialized Ecologies? If so, in what ways?
Sam Ikueze: Yes, my research does intersect with the goals of Racialized Ecologies research group. Racialized Ecologies considers narrative practices exposing the environmental experiences of people who are on the margins in Canada and beyond. I explore how artists in/from West Africa offer a new perspective on ecology and climate change. I have a recent publication in Canada and Beyond journal, that focuses on how Africans, especially international students, consider their place in Canada in this environmentally sensitive time. My doctoral project examines West African cultural products, art installation and novels, inspired by waste and wastedness. In this project, I centre the concerns of my people who are excluded and become easily blind-spotted in the current ecological discourse. I argue that these artistic interventions provide us with a way to mourn the cost of global consumerism and capitalism in the Global South amid global ecological catastrophe.
Fyza Azam: As you’ve been conducting your own research, have you run into any challenges? If so, how have you overcome those challenges?
Sam Ikueze: My research has changed a lot due to my relationship with the Racialized Ecologies research group. I mean, I’ve moved from thinking about narratives of bird conservation, which I’m still interested in, to thinking about the spectrality of what I call West African ecological art, and I have to do the work of framing that. What is it? What does it mean for this kind of art to be spectral, and how do I connect it to the larger ecological discourse of sustainability? It’s very challenging, but part of what I’m doing is just sitting with the ideas, which is also part of what I’ve learned to do in my role as research assistant. Just sit with the ideas, read more and also work with the community, run my ideas around people, see what they are thinking, understanding that the project of thinking is not divorced from the community; in this case, an academic community. You have to be part of the community, which is what the Racialized Ecologies research group has provided me. They have shown me how to work within a community, and I’ve taken that, and it’s helping me overcome the challenges that I encounter in my research.
Fyza Azam: Is there anything else you’d like to say about the experience of being a research assistant?
Sam Ikueze: It’s a whole lot of learning and learning and learning. Being a research assistant has offered me an opportunity to work with people who continue to practice learning with and sitting with. Learning with others is something I’ve really come to benefit from, and I think it’s one of the things I find very interesting in this project and in my role as a research assistant.
Fyza Azam: Thank you. That’s the end of the interview.