Jade Da Costa (they/them/she) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies – Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Saskatchewan, as well as a community organizer, creative writer, knowledge sharer, and award winning teacher from/across Central Southern Ontario. Their research, organizing, art, and pedagogy are holistically informed by their positionality as a disabled, thrice neurodivergent genderqueer bisexual woman of colour from a mixed race and mixed class background, but converge on topics of social justice, anti-racism, decolonization, and abolition. They approach their work and life from a worldsense informed by Black Feminist, Queer of Colour, and Critical Race Feminists who are working in, around, or in proximity to Sylvia Wynter's paradigm of the Genre of Human as Man, in addition to Indigiqueer, Two-Spirit, and Indigenous Feminist thinkers and creatives. 

Jade is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of New Sociology: Journal of Critical Praxis, a social justice journal conceived by and for racialized, Indigenous, queer, trans, disabled, and/or woman-identified students, activists, organizers, and creatives; the curator of Erotic Pedagogy, an online resource designed to help PK-12 educators decolonize their sexual education lesson plans, funded by SOGI UBC; and the cofounder and now director of The People's Pantry, a food justice mutual aid group formed in response to COVID-19, feeding families from Tkaronto to the Haldimand Tract. Their current research, Exacerbated Hunger, draws on their organizing work with The People's Pantry to examine and address racialized food insecurity in the era of COVID-19 using digital storytelling methods and qualitative interviews. The project is funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant and is partnered with Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice and the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute at the University of Guelph, where Jade holds Adjunct Professor status and recently completed a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Highlighted Publications 

• Da Costa, J. (2025). Student Choice Projects as Engaged Pedagogy within the Neoliberal University. In M.L. Butler, J. Davis-McElligatt, & M. Feifer (Eds.), bell hooks' Radical Pedagogy: New Visions of Feminism, Justice, Love, and Resistance in the Classroom, pp. 35-46. London: Bloomsbury. 
• Da Costa, J. (2025). Fat Brown Queer Kid: Pathologizing Unruly ‘Girls’. Feral Feminisms, 14(2).
• Da Costa, J. (2025). ‘I don’t feel like an activist’: Monstrous Subjectivities and the Racial Elsewheres of Queer ‘Activism’. Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 50: 66-82.
• Da Costa, J. (2025). Erotic Pedagogy: Queer of Colour Sex Education. Pp. 202–213 in Schmidt, J. & Schwarz, C.R. (eds.) Queer (Hi)Stories. Transcript Publishing. 
• Da Costa, J. (2024). Charity Not Solidarity: COVID-19 and the Non-Profitization of Mutual Aid in Canada. Journal of Canadian Studies. 58(1): 78–96. 
• Da Costa, J. (2023). Theory Is Not a Luxury: Literary Studies, Sociology, and Minoritarian Critique. Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review. 255: 77–99. 
• Da Costa, J. (2022). Monstrous Awakenings: Queer Necropolitics in Vivek Shraya and Ness Lee’s Death Threat. Feminist Theory, 1–29. doi/10.1177/14647001221085944
• Da Costa, J. (2021). The 'New' White Feminism: Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism and the Problem of Biological Determinism in Western Feminist Theory. Pp. 317–334 in Carter, K. & Brunton, J. (eds.) TransNarratives: Scholarly and Creative Works on Transgender Experience. Women’s Press.

Select Creative Publications 

• Da Costa, J. (2025, September 18). Unarchiving Desire. QT Literary Magazine.
• Da Costa, J. (2025). We Say–A Poem. Studies in Social Justice, 19(1): 171–172. https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v19i1.4941
• Da Costa, J. (2024, June 1). Fluid. [Short story]. IdentiQueer Magazine, 1: 19–21. Print.
• Da Costa, J. (2022). Re: What is wealth inequality? Studies in Social Justice, 16(3): 649–651. https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v16i3.4016
• Da Costa, J. (2021). Motherland. Re:locations: Journal of the Asia and Pacific World. https://relocationsutoronto.wordpress.com/2021/01/25/motherland/
• Da Costa, J. (2020). Interesting. Feminist Review, 126: 148–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778920911946 

Jade has over 11 years of teaching experience across six postsecondary institutions and is a firm believer in engaged pedagogical approaches, student advocacy, and transgressive teaching. They prioritize meeting students where they're at and co-creating knowledge that takes seriously the pedagogical richness of their everyday lives and the liberatory potential therein. In 2023, They launched the Student Project Page on their website, which features exemplary creative and public facing assignments submitted by various students since 2020. They have also mentored countless students and youth formally and informally within and beyond academia, having been awarded both the Robert J. Tiffin Student Leadership Award and the Mary-Jo Nadeau Activist Scholar Award by York University in 2022, as well as the John O’Neill Teaching Award in 2019 and Western's Graduate Student Teaching Award in 2016. Mostly recently, they were awarded the 2024-2025 Teaching and Learning Excellence Award for Sessional Instructors at the University of Guelph for their Sociology graduate course, Diversity and Social Inequality. 

COURSES FOR 2025/26 ACADEMIC YEAR

WGST 210: Gendered Perspectives on Current Events (Fall Term)

WGST 112: Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies (Winter Term)

Grants Information  

Research Grants 

• Jade Da Costa (PI) and Carla Rice, Andrea Paras, and Nadiya N. Ali (Co-Is), with Elizabeth Jackson (collaborator). "Exacerbated Hunger: Addressing Racialized Food Insecurity in the Era of COVID-19." The Social Science and Humanities Research Council, 2024-26, $69,285. 
• Jade Da Costa (PI). "Erotic Pedagogy: Decolonizing PK–12 Sexual Education." SOGI UBC & York University's Academic Excellence Fund, 2022, $3000, $700. 

Community Grants 

• "Good Food Access Fund." Community Food Centre Canada, 2020-2021, $50,000.
• TELUS Friendly Future Foundation, 2020-2021, $20,000.
• "United Way Local Love Fund." United Way Greater Toronto, 2020, $10,000.
  "FoodShare Emergency Good Food Box initiative." FoodShare-Toronto, 2020-2021, $6,500.
• 2025, 2021 Mazon Grocery Grant Fund. MAZON Canada, $2,500, $3000.

Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Guelph, 2025

Ph.D. in Sociology, York University, 2023

M.A. in Sociology, Western University, 2016

B.A. in Sociology & English Literature, Western University, 2014