Nesha Z. Haniff

 Dr. Haniff’s work has focused on empowerment pedagogies and marginalized populations which have been centered on HIV, gender and innovative education for low literate populations. She has developed several  educational modules on HIV/AIDS, violence, and women’s reproductive health. Her work has been located in the Caribbean, South Africa and the US. My over all project speaks to the imperative of integrating race, gender, and social consciousness ( both practice and theory) as knowledge development using the challenge of highly educated students attempting to teach in communities using a Freirean approach. Students must understand that empowerment methodologies do not eschew the rigors of ideas but those ideas must include a praxis that engages them in human rights advocacy at every level.

Human rights advocacy includes shaping the students’ consciousness in two other areas – the limits of science in developing appropriate technologies that will both protect women’s health and women’s agency and the pedagogical challenges of true empowerment that will critically examine who is empowered. Is the privileged the biggest beneficiary or the community? Thus, human rights become advocacy for new technologies that will put women’s sexual health in their own hands and as well as self-criticism and reflection on participating  in the many so called empowerment  projects The two path breaking courses that result are The Pedagogy of Action, Activism in race gender and Health, and Women’s Agency and Sexual Safety: Advocating for the new science (or Putting Women’s Bodies at the Center of Science). Students are engaged in transformative work and in turn transform themselves.