CURRENT RESEARCH

My current research is on African-Canadian youth institutional marginality and South Sudanese collective identity in the context of state-building. 

My work with immigrant youth and families in Calgary for nearly a decade exposed me to how system professionals such as teachers, social workers and police make decisions about African-Canadian youth. These system professionals are influenced by cultural conditioning, institutional policies and regulations, colonial histories, and Eurocentric epistemologies. They therefore make decisions mediated by these discourses instead of prioritizing what these young people have to say about themselves. Young people therefore feel misjudged and silenced as institutional discourses become the authority through which they are related to. This is the beginning of what I have referred to as social misrepresentation cycle. 

I am also working on the historical development of South Sudanese collective identity. Westerners have for a long time spoken for Africans so they tend to dictate, without realizing, how Africans should call themselves. 

Research interests

• Youth institutional marginality
• Husserlian Phenomenology
• Identity and social justice
• Epistemological coloniality
• Practical ethics and identity
• Sudanese and South Sudanese politics and history

Garang, K. ë., Leslie, G. & Black, W. (2023). Afrophobia in Canadian institutions: Youth marginality, system professionals and systemic barriers. Child & Youth Services:  DOI: 10.1080/0145935X.2023.2184795  .

Leslie, G. & Garang, K. ë. (2023). Community-based mentorship as community cultural wealth: Mitigating African-Canadian youth mental health in Canadian institutions. In Communities mental health in Canada: Overcoming obstacles, bridging the gaps. University of Ottawa Press (Forthcoming). 

Garang, K. ë. & Anucha, U.  (2023).   In-Group bias and inter-group dialogue in Canadian multiculturalism. Journal of Progressive Human Services (forthcoming). 

Garang, K. ë. (2022). Back to ‘things themselves’: breaking the cycle of misrepresentation when serving African Canadian youth. Critical and Radical Social Work, 10(2), 506-517. https://doi.org/10.1332/204986021X16521779031727 .

Garang, K.  ë.  (2021). Birth Of A State: Rethinking South Sudanese Collective Identity Through Identity Anchors. Modern Africa: Politics, History And Society, 9(2),5-36. https://doi.org/10.26806/modafr.v9i2.330

Garang, K. ë (2019). Political Ideology and Organisational Espousal: A Political-Historical Analysis of Dr. John Garang De Mabior’s “New Sudan Vision”. Modern Africa: Politics, History And Society, 7(2), 89-122. https://doi.org/10.26806/modafr.v7i2.258

Garang, K.  ë.  (2019). Review of “Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present” (Book Review)  Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice 6 (1):  B6–B10.   

 2108-Garang-BR-layout (mun.ca) 

Garang, K. ë. (2018).  "Failed Leadership: Corruption, Kleptocracy, and Democratic Exclusion ." In S. C. Roach and D. K. Hudson,  The Challenge of Governance in South Sudan: Corruption, Peacebuilding, . and Foreign Intervention . Routledge 

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