Bio

I am the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Black Expressive Culture and Creativity in the Diaspora, and an Associate Professor of Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University. I am also Founder and Director of Mapping Ontario's Black Archives (MOBA), a user-experience design platform that has created public access to Black archival collections in Ontario, and the Founder and Director of Black Creative Lab, a digital platform sharing content on Black artists, dancers, writers, and researchers.

I hold a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from McGill University and was previously a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto's Centre for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies - one of Canada's most competitive postdoctoral fellowships. In 2021, I was elected a Member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists (a seven-year term).

I am the author of four books. My most recent, Staging Blackface in Canada: Public Amusements, Variety Shows, and Racial Acts in an Age of Imitation, 1898-1919 (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2026), examines how blackface and ethnic caricature became normalized on Canadian stages in the early twentieth century, and how those same stages also hosted some of the first Black musicals and operas the country had ever seen. It follows Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897 (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2025), Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty (Coach House Books, 2021), and Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada's Black Beauty Culture (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019). I also co-edited Creative Industries in Canada (Canadian Scholars Press, 2022).

My research has been supported by more than $5.9 million in competitive funding, including a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair ($500,000 over five years, plus a $100,000 first-term research stipend), a $329,500 Canada Foundation for Innovation grant, a $263,779 SSHRC Insight Grant, a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship ($140,000), and grants from the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Early Researcher Award. I have published in the Journal of Canadian Studies, Theatre Research in Canada, the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, and the Canadian Journal of Communication, among others.

I am an experienced public speaker and media commentator. I have appeared on the New Books Network, the Authority File Podcast, CTV's The Social, and All Write in Sin City, and my work has been featured in Canada's History, the Literary Review of Canada, the Toronto Star, and Spacing. I am a TEDx speaker (TEDxUTSC) and made an expert appearance in the documentary Subjects of Desire (Dir. Jennifer Holness, 2022). I am currently Executive Producer and Narrator of the forthcoming documentary Blackface Nation (Dir. Evan King, Pink Moon Studio).

I grew up in Scarborough, just east of Toronto, where I played the cello, piano, and competitive soccer. My archival instinct began with collecting 1970s and 1980s reggae and soul vinyl records - a hobby that, in retrospect, was an early form of the archival work I do today.