Speaking Engagements
Dr. Hemani has delivered keynote addresses and invited talks at academic, cultural, and public events, including the Climate Change in South Asia Summit at University of Hawaiʻi (2023), Action Dignity’s Labour Day Event, and the Diversity Panel at the inaugural Music Declares Emergency Music Climate Summit. Her work has also been featured in media interviews and podcasts, including Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz, CBC’s What on Earth, and The Artsy Raven Podcast. Through these engagements, she explores themes of migration, cultural rights, music, climate justice, healing, and social change.
Workshops
Dr. Hemani speaks to universities, arts organizations, and changemakers on narrative power, decolonial futures, and collective care. To discuss your organization’s event, please visit the contact page to inquire about bookings.
Formats
Offerings include keynotes for large public audiences, intimate readings with Q&A, facilitation of community dialogues, panel participation, and multi-day writing workshops for educators, activists, and arts leaders seeking practical tools for systemic, story-driven change.
Events
Canadian Citizenship Ceremony (2024)
Keynote
A keynote weaving memoir, research, and music performance to examine how storytelling can transform inequitable cultural and political systems.
Workshop
A restorative, arts-based workshop that uses sound, breath, and gentle writing to help participants reclaim voice and expression after burnout, trauma, or silencing.
Asynchronous and synchronous learning journeys that weave sound, rest into personal and collective care. Offered live or online, these courses guide participants through embodied storytelling, deep rest practices, and creative healing.
Burnout & Rest
From panel discussions at Artists Speak at Mount Royal University to workshops for the Canadian Poverty Institute, Dr. Hemani has shared resources on burnout recovery and rest with audiences spanning artists, changemakers, non-profits, and government.
Arts for Climate Justice
From Music Declares Emergency’s climate change panel in Toronto to delivering the keynote at the University of Hawai‘i’s Climate Change and South Asia Conference, Dr. Hemani has drawn on storytelling and sound to reveal the lived impacts of climate inequities and displacement.
Cultural Rights & Human Rights
A USIDHR-certified human rights educator, Dr. Hemani is preparing her monograph for Routledge’s Islam and Human Rights series. Her short story, Catabasis, received a jury commendation in the International Human Rights Arts Movement’s special issue on Hannah Arendt (forthcoming). Dr. Hemani is a member of PEN Canada’s Writers in Exile.
Belonging & Displacement: Storytelling in times of Precarity
Through memoir, cultural research, and lived experience, Dr. Shumaila Hemani explores how storytelling becomes a way to reclaim voice, dignity, and a sense of belonging when people are pushed to the margins by systems of power.
