kai.butterfield@mail.utoronto.ca
Kai Butterfield is an artist, Ontario Certified Teacher, and PhD candidate in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto). They work as a primary-junior occasional teacher in the Toronto District School Board and a course instructor in the Master of Teaching program.
Their doctoral research employs hauntology to assess the ways that antiblackness has shaped restorative justice theory. Hauntology, a methodology that presences the enduring impact of historical harm, illuminates how the spectre of slavery haunts restorative justice theory and appears in schools as the continued subjugation of Black students within restorative justice processes. Butterfield's research proposes a framework for disrupting antiblackness in school discipline and assessing the efficacy of neoliberal justice-making processes.
Keywords: Restorative Justice, School Discipline, Social Justice Education, Black Studies, Black Canadian Studies, Black Feminisms, Hauntology, Haunting as Methodology