Short bio

Dr. Melanie McBride is a Canadian post-doctoral researcher-practitioner, adjunct part-time faculty at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), and founder of the Aroma Lab at TMU’s Responsive Ecologies Lab (RELab). She is currently a co-principal Investigator on grants examining the material and structural contingencies of tacit and multi-modal learning, communicating, and making in skilled trades, arts, craft, and physically embodied practice. In addition to her research, Melanie develops specialized multi-modal training materials and mixed-media scent applications for trade education, cultural heritage, and arts interpretation. 

Detailed overview

Building on over 20 years of teaching practice in secondary, post-secondary, graduate, and professional trade education, I have directly observed both the positive and negative impacts of technology in teaching, learning, and assessment. Despite my initial optimism about the use of technology and digital culture in education, this earlier enthusiasm gave way to a more critical awareness that these technologies had not so much revolutionized student learning but, paradoxically, set it further behind.

These observations inspire my current research focus on the tangible affordances of non-institutional, applied, and non-formal learning environments, with a focus on the material contingencies of physically embodied and multi-modal practices and their contribution to the development of forms of literacy, learning, and competences that cannot be indirectly acquired.

My theoretical orientation to the material and environmental affordances of learning as ‘doing’ reflects anti-cognitivist James Gibson‘s ecological orientation to perception as an activity that is entirely contingent on the material and in-the-world affordances of environments, substances, and physical phenomena that make the activity of perceiving and doing things possible (i.e., you can’t learn wood working without wood and fine hand tools; you can’t see or ‘read’ a text in the dark, so you need light and maybe glasses). I follow Gibson’s lead in challenging the, still dominant, mind-over-matter and neuro-centric (i.e., cognitivist) notions of learning as a machine-like process of informational ‘accrual’ that Gibson similarly critiqued.

To this end, and as myself and my colleagues explain in our publications, much of so-called educational technology merely puts a new interface over outdated models of teaching-as-transmission and curriculum-as-content that also underwrites the conceits of the algorithmic turn. As educators, we’re also concerned with the ordering of indirectly-acquired, information-centric and content driven models of teaching and learning over more directly experiential, authentically-situated, and practice-based learning that constitutes, what I term, ‘educational artifice.’

These and related problems inform my current research program, which investigates the material contingencies of tacit, physically embodied, multi-modal learning, communicating, and making  skilled trade, craft, and arts practice. In my current role as a co-investigator on several in-progress research studies I am helping to document the pedagogical affordances of materially contingent craft, arts, and trade practices, that are developed and acquired in real environments, with real tools, overseen by real human practitioners.

My focus on these physically embodied, material, and situated contingencies of learning found in domains of applied practice extends the insights I developed from my site-specific doctoral field work on informal, multi-modal learning environments in North America and Europe. 

Knowledge mobilization

I have mobilized my scholarly knowledge through peer-reviewed academic conferences, symposiums, colloquia, guest lectures, classroom visits, facilitated workshops, and contributions to cultural heritage projects. Early in my graduate studies, this included my participation in smell-walks and smell-mapping activities under the guidance of my late colleague and first scent-specific mentor Dr. Victoria Henshaw. I also took part in smell walking and mapping activities led by Dr. Kate McLean in Marseille (France), Toronto, and Vancouver (Canada), which provided a more cross-cultural understanding of uses of scent as a prompt for affective and artistic self-expression using water colours (and other artistic media) to represent subjective impressions of urban smellscapes.

As I later refined my research, my knowledge mobilization efforts became more focused on the the extra-social and material contingencies of aromatic materials as a tangible resource for learning and communicating in practice. To this end, I have collaborated with chemists,  sommeliers, wine educators, winemakers, hospitality professionals, and authors in the wine and spirits trade on the practical considerations of sourcing and creating custom aroma reference standards for purposes of odour characterization and product evaluation, which are used by scientists and in the context of wine education and for consumer sensory evaluation panels.

My interest in sourcing, collecting, and creating original, customized aromatic learning resources inspired the development of my Aroma Lab, which I founded in 2013 at Toronto Metropolitan University. My interest (read: obsession!) with aromatic materials ultimately led to my development of scent applications for research prototypes and, later, courses in perfumery with American natural perfumer Mandy Aftel. Since then, my practice expanded to mixed-media scent design applications for purposes of heritage mediation (i.e., providing context for artifacts), cultural/arts interpretation, and exhibit features. I have mobilized insights developed from my research and practice for academia and industry, including master classes for Brock University’s International Cool Climate Wine Symposium, The Independent Wine Education Guild (IWEG), The Canadian Association of Sommeliers (CAPS), George Brown’s Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts (CHCA), scholarly conferences, and master classes with professional sommeliers in Ontario and Quebec. 

Scent design

My unconventional path to scent creation draws on over 12 years of research on scent-themed interactions, practices of cultural mediation, smell walking/mapping, studies of perfumery, and wine aroma evaluation. Drawing on formal and informal self-study in traditional and experimental mixed-media (natural and synthetic) scent applications, my work is intended for learning, training, and cultural mediation rather than conventional fragrance (i.e., wearable perfumes). Accordingly, I refer to myself as a researcher-practitioner rather than a perfumer or olfactory artist. This also reflects the fact that my practice of scent design is ancillary to a more broad-based research program that extends to many other domains of practice (and materials) beyond scent and that my practice is informed by a critical, rather than commercial, orientation to research, scholarship, and pedagogy. This is to say: there’s a lot more to scent than the appeals to emotion and memories, which are often implicitly intended to keep consumer literacy and learning at bay. 

Please see my “scent design” page for a more detailed overview of my research-informed philosophy and approach to scent design. 

To this end, I have developed original mixed media scents for scholarly knowledge mobilization, conference workshops, prototypes, training, and exhibits. My scents contain rare, hard to find, and unusual ingredients that are as original and truly one-of-a-kind as the artifacts or artworks they accompany. Given the high volume of natural materials in my compositions, my scent compositions require extensive stability testing of varied diluents and ratios, and attention to safe limits specific to the intended application, and careful sourcing and budgeting (particularly in the case of a very long exhibit run).

Many of the materials I use, including fine man-made aroma chemicals, do not scale for a commercial products and are an opportunity to engage with odours we rarely have exposure to in the corporate fragrance paradigm that mediates our environments. In the case of natural materials drawn from real physical environments in the world (such as seaweed from the North Atlantic or fine Canadian pine absolute) there is an opportunity to make connection with molecules that have a physical origin in the world. 

In contrast with ‘multi-sensory’ orientations to scent that are premised on affect and subjectivity alone, I argue that the true power of scent isn’t another mechanism for ‘self’ reflection but an opportunity to learn about something at the other end of the nose. Rather than inscribing ourselves onto these materials, as our species tends to relate to nature and the outside world, I feel it is time we learned how to decode a chemical dimension of communication that plants, insects, animals, as well as trained cooks, perfumers, and other practitioners of flavour and fragrance have the fluency to understand and communicate intentional things. There is far more to scent than how it makes us feel.

In 2024, I collaborated with the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) to design, formulate, and compound four unique and historically-themed scents for the AGO’s epic Making Her Mark Exhibit, which you can read about in my interview with Foyer Magazine. I also re-developed five custom scents for the AGO’s multi-modal Art Cart scent feature, including a whiff of Elvis inspired by the gallery’s iconic Andy Warhol painting ‘Elvis I & II,’ and other custom scents I designed that were inspired by the works of Mark Rothko, James Tissot, Tom Thomson, and Gustave Caillebotte. Most recently, I collaborated with the AGO on two custom scents to accompany the exhibit David Blackwood: Myth & Legend. 

Prior industry and teaching experience 

After completing my undergraduate degree, I studied online writing and information design at Centennial College with an interest in interactive storytelling. For many years I worked as a freelance writer, editor, and content producer for independent and national digital media, including interactive fiction for Toronto’s Trapeze Media, digital heritage stories for CBC’s award-winning Digital Archives, educational content for Toronto’s Mystus Interactus Exhibits, digital training content for government clients, and consulting and talks for magazine and digital culture non-profits, such as Magazine’s Canada. These industry experiences led to my first instructional appointments teaching post-secondary and post-graduate courses in interactive writing, new media, digital reporting, and professional communications at Centennial College’s School of Communications, Media and Design. 

Education

I hold a B.A. (Honours/Specialist) degree in English literature from the University of Toronto, B.Ed. (Intermediate/Secondary) teaching degree from The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, and a M.A and Ph.D from York University’s joint program in Communications and Culture. After completing my Ph.D, I was awarded a Post-Doctoral Fellowship from York University’s Faculty of Education that extended my doctoral research on aroma into the context of educational resources and reference standards used in the context of wine education and aroma training.

Qualifications

• Ph.D., Communications and Culture, York University. 
• M.A., Communication and Culture, York University.
• B.Ed., Bachelor of Education (Intermediate/Secondary), Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto.
• B.A. Hons., Bachelor of Arts, English Literature, University of Toronto.

Additional Training + Certifications

• Additional Teaching Qualifications (AQ): Media I and II, York University/Ontario College of Teachers.
• Post-Graduate Certificate in Online Writing and Information Design, Centennial College, School of Communications.
• Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) [current status: Inactive/Non-Practicing], certified secondary school teacher (Ontario College of Teachers) 
• Certificates in Natural Perfumery (Introductory and Intermediate). Between 2017 and 2019 I travelled to Berkeley, California to undertake courses with American natural perfumer Mandy Aftel at her home studio.

Press

My work has been featured in books, television, radio (CBC Metro Morning) and print media, interviews, and included in academic and trade blogs. Click the link below to listen to my (very fun!) visit with CBC Toronto’s Metro Morning crew:CBC Metro Morning: The scent of human desperation

Please use my Contact form for professional inquiries.