About
A multi-award-winning scholar, Dr. Caroline Shenaz Hossein is Canada Research Chair in Africana Development and Feminist Political Economy (2022-2027) and Associate Professor of Global Development & Political Economy at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She also founded the Diverse Solidarity Economies (DISE) Collective, which involves a wide range of feminist scholars concerned with building a human economy. In 2024, Hossein was named one of Canada’s most accomplished Black Women by #100ABCWomen, a national honour, and elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists for a seven-year term. Presently Research Fellow at the International Advanced Studies’ Centre for Capitalist Studies at University College London, UK, and in 2025 Hossein is the Ujima Cooperative Fellow of Feminist Economics, USA. In earlier years, she has been a Fellow at the Post Growth Institute, and held visiting positions at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia; University of Guyana; University of the West Indies St. Augustine, Trinidad; Jadavpur University, India and a Fulbright scholar at UWI at the Mona Campus in Jamaica. The recipient of a prestigious Ontario Early Researcher Award (2018-26), Hossein’s research has attracted funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The Cooperator’s Group, scholarly associations, credit unions, and private foundations.
A highly sought-after speaker, Hossein has given keynote lectures in Belgium, Canada, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Thailand, UK and the United States. She is the author of over 50 scholarly publications, including two award-winning articles: “A Black Epistemology for the Social and Solidarity Economy: The Black Social Economy” (2020) received the Rodney Higgins Faculty Award for best scholarly paper from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists while “Big Man Politics in the Social Economy” (2017) won the Helen Potter Award for the best article in the Review of Social Economy. Dr. Hossein’s sole-authored books include The Banker Ladies: Vanguards of Solidarity Economics and Community-Based Banks (2024, U of Toronto P), which received an honourable mention from the William Foote Whyte and Kathleen King Whyte Book Prize sponsored by Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, and Politicized Microfinance: Money, Power, and Violence in the Black Americas (2016, U of Toronto P), which won the Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Agarwal Book Prize from the International Association of Feminist Economics and co-won the WEB DuBois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Hossein is also co-author of Business and Society: A Critical Introduction (2017, Zed Books), and co-editor of The Black Social Economy (2018, Palgrave Macmillan), as well as two collections issued by Oxford University Press: Community Economies in the Global South: Case Studies of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations and Economic Cooperation (2022); and Beyond Racial Capitalism: Co-operatives in the African Diaspora (2023). She currently has two further books under contract with Cambridge University Press.
Over the course of her academic career, Hossein has shared her expertise by variously serving as: a board member for the International Association of Feminist Economics; Chair of the Board of the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences; a member of the Human Economy Lab, Global Project (Sweden); and an elected Trustee for the Association for Social Economics Board Executive Council, Association for Social Economics. She has also acted as an advisory/editorial board member for the following publishing entities/initiatives: Racism by Context, Oxford University Press; UN Task Force for the Social and Solidarity Economy; Fortunately Magazine; Feminist Political Economy Series, Stanford University Press, MIT Press, Cambridge University Press; The Review of Black Political Economy; Kerala’s Journal of Polity and Society; and the American Review of Political Economy.
Prior to joining the academy, Dr. Hossein spent nine years employed by several global non-profits and then, for eight years, owned her own small firm, providing consulting services to clients like the World Bank Group, UNDP, USAID, Women for Women International, MEDA, IRC, CIDA, IDB, the Aga Khan Foundation, and other development agencies.
Projects
SSHRC Project
African origins in the social economy: A study of the Black Banker
Ladies and economic collectives in Canada
Africana Economies Portal
A space dedicated to resources concerning the social economy of Africans and their diasporas.
The Black Social Economy
Solidarity Economics
Diaspora Businesses
ROSCAs
Diverse Economies for Youth
Social Innovations Project
Social innovations in Ontario: An analysis of self help groups, cooperatives, diaspora businesses and social enterprises among African-Canadians and racialized people
Canada Research Chair
A paradigm shift in political economy using the design principles of international collectives, the lived experiences African diaspora co-operators, and principles mutuality and reciprocity.
Publications
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