Henri Boyi

Decolonial Conversations: A Panel on Decolonizing Learning 

Our panel on Decolonizing Learning will draw on the twelve-year Experiential Learning Course on and in Rwanda. This Interdisciplinary Experiential Learning course gives participants opportunities and tools to connect their education to the outside world and to become global citizens who will, through intercultural competence and sustainable critical and ethical engagement, build bridges between people, communities and cultures, between the Global South and the Global North. The panel will be an extension of The Rwanda Course Exhibition which is an integral part of the Decolonial Conversations conference. The panelists will share their research and reflection on how the course itself developed into an intellectual and intercultural journey towards new ways of learning and unlearning. Such a journey can help students, colleagues, academic leaders, and community partners to reimagine decolonial approaches which can foster true and relevant education for today’s world challenges through a broader and inclusive understanding of Knowledge (s). 

Biography 

Professor Henri Boyi teaches in the Department of French Studies at the University of Western Ontario. He has taught courses on the French language, Translation, Literature, Francophone Civilization, and Decolonization. Among the many courses that Boyi has taught at Western, his signature course, Rwanda: Culture, Society and Reconstruction, also called The Rwanda Course, stands out as one of the very first international experiential / Community engaged Learning courses at Western University. Since 2009, this course has extended Western’s ongoing partnership with University of Rwanda and several local NGOs in the East-African country for 12 years. As a result of his outstanding teaching and his dedication to community work, Boyi has been the recipient of numerous awards including the highly coveted Marilyn Robinson Award for Excellence in Teaching (2009), Western’s Community Service-Learning Award (2011), the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Award (2012), the Western Humanitarian Award (2012), the Top 25 RBC Canadian Immigrant Award (2015), the International Service-Learning Leadership Award from The College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Rwanda, in Kigali, Rwanda (2016), and the Fellow for Western University’s The Africa Institute Fellowship - Honour for life - since 2017.