Misha Apel

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 

Misha graduated from Western in 2019 from the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities double majoring in English and minoring in Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction. Misha participated in the Rwanda course in 2016 and returned to Rwanda in 2019 as the course’s Teaching Assistant. Misha has had the pleasure of working with Prof. Boyi for the last 10 years on the course, helping with fundraising, recruitment efforts and the exhibition. Misha especially appreciated learning the principles of Ubuntu, how each of us are interconnected, and applying its principles to my everyday learning. Misha returned to Western Law for law school and was called to the bar in 2024. Misha is an Associate at a Bay Street firm in Toronto, Ontario, practicing Capital Markets and Regulatory Law.