Nadia Fazal

Nadia Fazal is a PhD Candidate in Social and Behavioural Health Sciences at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and is part of the Collaborative Doctoral Program in Global Health at the University of Toronto. Nadia identifies as a researcher, artist, community development worker, health promoter, and global health practitioner.

Her doctoral research explores the role of community arts engagement in health promotion in the context of Goma, Eastern Congo. As part of her research, Nadia is conducting a secondary data analysis of the qualitative data that were generated for the purposes of the film ‘Art, For What?’; Nadia directed and co-produced this film with a Congolese non-governmental organization (NGO) called Yole!Africa. In this secondary analysis she explores the perceptions of local artists in Goma about how they are negotiating the content of their artistic expression with international NGOs, and the ways in which this is influencing the capacity of local communities to effect positive change.

In the second part of her doctoral research, Nadia is conducting a secondary data analysis of qualitative data that were generated from a community art project with adolescent girls in Goma, which was implemented by Colors of Connection (CC). In this case study analysis, Nadia focuses on CC’s participatory and assets-focused approaches to community arts engagement, exploring how these approaches play a role in the negotiations of the content of artistic expression between CC and the local community, and how this can influence the local community to effect positive change.