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Authority record
Richards, Sonya
Person · 1992 -

Sonya Richards is a Canadian archivist and poet. She was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, in 1992. In 1996, she immigrated to Canada with her mother, father, and two siblings. After living in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2001, she and her family moved to Brampton, Ontario. She attended Cardinal High School and graduated in 2010. She graduated from York University with a HBA in 2019. After this, she attended Sheridan College and completed a post-graduate certificate in 2021. Richards then received her MI from the University of Toronto in 2025. Outside of her academic pursuits, Richards wrote several unpublished short stories and poems.

Robertson, Katherine
Person · 1997-

Katherine Victoria Robertson (born 30 October 1997) is a full-time student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. She grew up in Scarborough, Toronto as the eldest child with three younger brothers, and is the first in her family to attend university. In the Interest of providing transparency and positionality she self identifies as a middle class, white, settler, disabled, queer, cis gender woman.
Katherine attended high school at Cedarbrae Collegiate Institute from 2011 to 2015, during which time she volunteered as a summer school teacher's aide in 2013, and worked as a summer school bus monitor and elementary-level teaching assistant in 2015. She went on to complete her Honours Bachelor of Arts at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus from Fall 2015 to Winter 2023, where she majored in history and minored in anthropology and women’s and gender studies. Her research interests examined histories of gender and sexuality, race and post-colonial studies, and Ethiopian history. The duration of her degree was longer than usual due to balancing school commitments with working as a Locations Support Person for Entertainment Partners Canada Inc. from 2015 to 2019, necessary accommodations for her learning disability, and unforeseen obligations resulting from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these hurdles she achieved the Historical and Cultural Studies Emerging Scholars Award in 2018, the Dean's List in 2023, and graduated with High Distinction. Following the completion of her undergraduate degree she was invited in 2023 to present her course paper “Myth and Conflict Under the Solomonic Dynasty: A Case Study of Queen Gudit and the Queen of Sheba,” as part of a panel “Reckonings and Re-imaginings: The Ethiopian ‘Dark Ages’ (6th-12th centuries)” organized for the annual conference of the Canadian Society of Medievalists, in association with the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences annual congress. In Fall 2024, Katherine began her graduate studies in the Combined Degree program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information (iSchool). She is enrolled in the Archives and Records Management concentration and has focused her research on engagement between GLAM institutions and Indigenous communities. She is also working with Dr. Michael Gervers to publish a volume on the Ethiopian Dark Ages, which includes her paper “Myth and Conflict Under the Solomonic Dynasty.”

Ruiter, Isabella
Person · 2001-

Isabella Ruiter (b. 2001) is a female international museum and archival studies student based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was born an American citizen in New Jersey, USA to a Pakistani-American mother and Dutch-immigrant father. Ruiter was born and raised a Baha'i, a somewhat recent Abrahamic religion that her parents adopted independently of each other before they met. As a Baha'i, one of the principles of which is service to humanity, Ruiter spend most of her free time growing up planning and facilitating service projects for her community, including painting murals in her hometown, tutoring elementary school children, and organizing multi-faith and racial literacy events as a few examples.

Ruiter graduated from Hillsborough High School in 2019, then pursuing a gap year of service work in the Baha'i World Centre in Haifa, Israel. She worked as a gardener amongst other global volunteers for nine months, the year cut short due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In 2020, Ruiter started her undergraduate studies in History and Cultural Anthropology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, but remained living in Hillsborough. Though her degree is in General History, she had a particular interest in ancient and medieval European studies, taking many extra classes in Classics. In 2022, she studied abroad in Rome, Italy at John Cabot University for a semester, taking immersive history classes around the city. She studied abroad in Benin for a period of three weeks in the summer shortly after arriving back from Rome. The trip to Benin was focused on cultural heritage, hosted by École du Patrimoine Africain (EPA) in Porto Novo. During her undergraduate experience, she developed a passion for Public History, receiving a certificate upon graduation. As a Junior, she was accepted by Rutger's Career Exploration and Success office to participate in the FIGS (First-Year Interest Group Seminar) program as an instructor, leading her to develop, design, and execute a lesson plan for a class of 25 freshmen students over the course of a semester.

Ruiter graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Cultural Anthropology in 2024, summa cum laude. In the same year, she was accepted into the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information to pursue their Combined Degree Program, which includes a Master of Information in Archives and Records Management as well as a Master of Museum Studies. She was granted the Faculty of Information International Fellowship upon admission into the program. Ruiter has since relocated to Toronto to pursue this degree with her husband, whom she married in the summer of 2024. She is currently an International student at the University of Toronto, but intends on staying in Ontario permanently and is in the process of applying for Permanent Residency through marriage.

Samuel, Dinah
DS-99 · Person · 1999-

Dinah Samuel was born in 1999 in Toronto, Canada and spent most of her life in Pickering, Ontario from 2009 onwards. She was born to Eritrean Catholic immigrants to a family of five. She has attended St. Barbara Catholic Elementary School (2003-2009), St. Anthony Daniel Catholic Elementary School (2009-2012), St. Wilfrid Catholic Elementary School (2012-13), and Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School (2013-2017).

Her past education includes a BA at the University of Toronto Scarborough in History (2017-2021) and an MA in History (2022-2023). During her BA education, she was a member of the Historical and Cultural Studies Student Association (HCSSA) as the Vice President (External) (2019-2020) and President (2020-2021). Her Masters History paper was titled "The Eritrean People's Liberation Front Ideological Trajectory" detailing the Eritrean revolutions' ideological shifts and international relations from the 1960s to their independence in 1991.

Her past careers predating her current education include several summer positions as a Production Assistant at Celestica (2018-2020), a Collections Assistant at the Sharon Temple Museum and National Historic Site (2018-2019), and a Local History Assistant at the Oshawa Public Library (2022-2023) and Pickering Public Library (2025).

She is currently a University of Toronto student at the Faculty of Information studying Archives and Records Management, with an interest in community archives and decolonial archival practices.

Sapa, Adam
DAW-SAP · Person · 1998-

Adam Sapa is a student studying Archives and Records Management at the University of Toronto's iSchool.