ABOUT

Robyn Maynard is an author and scholar based in Toronto. She holds the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies and the Women and Gender Studies Institute, where she is the inaugural director of the Black Movement Lab. Her writing on borders, criminalization, policing and abolition has been used to shape law and public policy and is taught widely in universities across Canada, the United States and Europe.

Maynard is the author of two books. Policing Black Lives (Fernwood/Duke University Press 2025), first published in 2017, is a national bestseller, designated as one of the “best 100 books of 2017” by the Hill Times, listed in The Walrus‘s “best books of 2018,” shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and the winner of the 2017 Errol Sharpe Book Prize. In 2018 the book was published in French with Mémoire d’encrier, titled NoirEs sous surveillance. Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada and won the 2019 Prix de libraires in the category of “essais.” Rehearsals for Living (Knopt/Haymarket, 2022) co-authored with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, is a Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and CBC National Bestseller, was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award for literary non-fiction, a finalist for the Heritage Toronto Book Award and designated one of CBC’s “best Canadian non-fiction books of 2022” and the “best 100 books of 2022” by the Hill Times. Other awards include “2018 Author of the Year” from Montreal’s Black History Month and the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQI* Emerging Writers.

Additional writing appears in Boston Review, Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Scholar & Feminist Journal and numerous book anthologies.

Maynard currently sits on the board of Interrupting Criminalization, where she writes a quarterly newsletter of news and activism about contemporary criminalization in Canada. She is currently working on two book manuscripts on the politics of Black movement and Black migration.