The Amherstburg Freedom Museum hosted a virtual book launch for Cheryl Thompson’s latest work, Staging Blackface in Canada, which was published in April 2026 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. We’re sharing a portion of that very interesting discussion.

In this Q&A, Professor Cheryl Thompson, one of TMU's new Canada Research Chairs, discusses her project "Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives" (MOBA), the importance of collaboration in reshaping historical narratives, the challenges of documenting Black expressive culture, and her advice for those pursuing a Canada Research Chair.

In September 2025, Dr. Cheryl Thompson presented an engaging session on how Black cultural practices, across music, fashion, and performance, are archived and remembered.

Dr. Thompson shared her expertise in archiving cultural artifacts and speak to the importance of documenting Black creativity. This conversation highlighted how Black heritage and culture can be preserved and rediscovered through the archive.

In this Book Talk, Dr. Cheryl Thompson, MA Communication and Culture '07, Assistant Professor at TMU's School of Performance speaks to Dr. Anne-Marie Lee-Loy, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies in the Faculty of Arts, about her book Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty.

Cheryl Thompson is an Assistant Professor at Ryerson University in the School of Creative Industries. She is author of Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture. She previously held a Banting postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. Her work has appeared in The Conversation, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Spacing, Herizons Magazine, Halifax Coast, and Rabble.ca. She was born and raised in Toronto, where she currently resides. She has also lived in the United States and in Windsor, Ontario. Her most recent book is Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics Of Loyalty.

Cheryl Thompson is one of Canada’s leading Black studies scholars. She is author of Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture and Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty. She is internationally recognized as a key thinker on media and archives. Her work on blackface has broadened the scope of Canadian history, performance and theatre studies, archival and museum studies. The recipient of numerous SSHRC grants, in 2021, she won an Ontario Early Researcher Award.

Moderator, Cheryl Thompson, and panelists, Cheryl Nembhard, Kevin Ormbsy and Charles C. Smith, explore the arts — a universal element in Black cultures — on how policy has shaped the arts scene in Toronto and for Toronto’s Black creatives as one of two morning breakout sessions at the inaugural 2019 Toronto Black Policy Conference.