Short summary

I am a Canadian post-doctoral researcher-practitioner, adjunct faculty at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), and founder of the Aroma Inquiry Lab within the Responsive Ecologies Lab (RELab) at TMU. I am currently a collaborating researcher on several in-progress grants that investigate the pedagogical affordances of physically embodied, tacit, and multimodal craft, trade, and arts practices, which require specialized materials, tools, situated environments, and customized workflows. In addition to my research, I create mixed-media scent applications for learning, training, scholarly knowledge mobilization, and cultural heritage mediation. 

Detailed overview

Drawing on over 20 years of teaching experience in secondary and post-secondary education, I have directly observed the increasingly negative impacts of technological determinism, which hasn’t so much ‘revolutionized’ teaching and learning but, paradoxically, de-skilled learners and teachers alike. These insights inform my graduate and post-doctoral research programs, which critique today’s disembodied screen-biased educational paradigms to spotlight dimensions of learning, teaching, and making that are proving inconvenient for today’s increasingly automated educational schemes. To this end, my current research program centres on the pedagogical contingencies of physically embodied, tacit, and multimodal craft, trade, and arts practices that require specialized materials, tools, situated environments, and customized workflows that are at risk of endangerment thanks to algorithmic systems of what my colleagues and I term ‘educational artifice.’

My theoretical orientation to this research reflects anti–cognitivist James Gibson‘s ecological view of perception as a relational activity that is contingent on the material and in-the-world affordances of environments, materials, and phenomena rather than an outcome of the mental processing of indirectly acquired (representational) knowledge. Accordingly, my work calls attention to the limitations of still dominant neuro-centric and mind over matter notions of learning as a machine-like process of informational accrual that Gibson similarly critiqued.

 As my colleagues and I explain in our recent publications, today’s educational schemes have merely applied a new interface over outdated models of teaching-as-transmission and curriculum-as-content that also underwrite the conceits of the algorithmic turn. As educators, we’re simultaneously concerned with the over-determination of indirectly-acquired, information-centric and content–driven models of educating that constitute what I have termed ‘educational artifice.’

My emphasis on the material and authentically situated (i.e., site/location-specific) contingencies of learning extends insights I developed during my doctoral field work and post-doctoral studies in the context of the role of tangible aromatic resources used in cultural heritage mediation. My research into more physically embodied, multimodal, and applied practice is intended to identify gaps in educational agendas where many crucial skills and competences are now ‘sold separately,’ leaving it to individual teachers and students to self-fund materials, tools, and infrastructure that were formerly resourced by institutions.

Academic knowledge mobilization

In my current role as an adjunct post-doctoral researcher at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Responsive Ecologies lab, I continue to develop my broad-based trans-disciplinary research on informal learning, multimodal literacy, and practice-based pedagogies. My scholarly contributions have been mobilized through peer-reviewed academic conferences, symposiums, colloquia, guest lectures, classroom visits, workshops, and collaborations with major cultural and arts institutions and trade (hospitality sector) partners.

Earlier in my graduate studies, I participated in smell-walks and smell-mapping activities under the guidance of my late colleague and first scent-specific mentor, Dr Victoria Henshaw, whose collection Design With Smell I contributed to. This led to my participation in a small pilot study of smell mapping activities led by Dr Kate McLean in Marseille (France). I later facilitated similar types of sensory walks in Toronto and Vancouver (Canada) to explore the use of these practices for purposes of multimodal learning.

As my doctoral research program evolved, I became more interested in the extra-social dimensions of scent beyond its conventional use as a ‘trigger’ for physiological or affective responses, to focus, instead, on the pedagogical, material, and structural contingencies required to learn with and through aromatic materials in practice. While there is an ever-growing body of scholarship on the cultural, social, and historical dimensions of smell and the senses, my work attempts to account for the more applied, practical, and material contingencies of aromatic practice that is focused on the insights and expertise of actual practitioners and funds of knowledge circulated outside of the specialized concerns of individual disciplines.

My interest in sourcing, collecting, and creating aromatic learning resources inspired the creation of the Aroma Inquiry Lab, which I founded in 2013 to extend the multimodal infrastructure of the Responsive Ecologies Lab (ReLab) at Toronto Metropolitan University.  

I have since mobilized insights I developed in my research and practice for academia, cultural institutions, and industry, including master classes for Brock University’s International Cool Climate Wine Symposium, where I led two master classes on sourcing and creating DIY aroma reference standards for odour characterisation in wine education, and similar workshops with The Independent Wine Education Guild (IWEG), the LCBO, the Canadian Association of Sommeliers (CAPS), George Brown’s Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts (CHCA), and two master classes in collaboration with Canadian sommelier Veronique Rivest. In addition to these activities, I have also created mixed-media aroma applications for cultural heritage, arts interpretation, and exhibits and for academic workshops and passive scent delivery prototypes for tangible embodied interactions (TEI).

My aroma practice

In addition to my work as a researcher, I create non-commercial scent applications for scholarly research and knowledge mobilization that call attention to aromatic materials, environments, and interactions as a missing modality of learning, teaching, communication, and making. My emphasis on the underlying materiality of aroma as a communicative modality and learning resource, reflects a pedagogical emphasis on knowing ‘with and through’ inquiries of practice and process. From this standpoint, my practice emphasizes aromatic literacy from the inside out. 

My unconventional path to scent creation followed my founding of the Aroma Inquiry Lab in 2013, which began as a small archive of raw, processed, and manufactured aromatic materials I had collected for purposes of teaching and learning. The focus of the lab was further refined from insights drawn from doctoral field work studies of scent-themed environments, interactions, and uses of aromatic raw materials for cultural heritage mediation in Grasse, France and related explorations of the creation of DIY scents based on my smell walking and mapping activities. After I defended my doctorate, I became interested in learning some of the principles of traditional perfumery, which I studied with American natural perfumer Mandy Aftel in her in-studio courses at her home atelier in Berkeley, California. I later expanded on these foundations through a combination of self-study, materials courses, and mentorship from perfumers working mixed-media (naturals and synthetics) scent applications. 

As my scent practice is ancillary to a broad-based research program that extends to contexts of practice beyond aroma, I refer to myself as a researcher-practitioner, rather than perfumer or olfactory artist. While my practice is technically perfumery, my chosen applications (i.e., formats) are intended for learning, rather than wearing or, in the case of ‘olfactory art,’ functioning as a ‘trigger’ for physiological, psychological, or sensory effects. This is an emphasis on smelling in the present tense, rather than reducing aroma to a ‘playback device’ (Ingold, 2013) for interior recollection. Finally, as a lifelong outdoors enthusiast and (very slow) distance runner (who trains year-round), my work is intended as a call to aromatic context that calls attention to the material and structural contingencies of aroma that resides at the other side of the nose, which encourages a more ecologically situated, physically embodied, and materially contingent relation to aroma rather than affective, therapeutic, or cosmetic orientations to scent at the site of consumption.

It is this more grounded orientation to aroma as a tangible (although invisible) communicative modality that informs my orientation to my practice. From this perspective, I believe the public can become literate and fluent in the language of aroma as a communicative modality beyond consumption (alone). From the standpoint of literacy and making, this extends to using aromatic materials to communicate things in deliberate ways, in contrast with the impulse to inscribe ourselves over materials that are actually already communicating. To this end, I have developed original mixed media aromatic applications for scholarly knowledge mobilization, conference workshops, prototypes, training, and exhibits. My work contains rare, hard-to-find, and unusual ingredients that are as original and truly one-of-a-kind and an opportunity for people to smell something that they would not otherwise have access to, and that doesn’t scale for commercial fragrance production. My work features ingredients from some of the finest natural and synthetic raw materials manufacturers in the world, such as Biolandes, Payan Bertrand, LMR, Robertet, Mane, Floral Concept, Berjé, Symrise, Firmenich, IFF, Givaudan, and Takasago. 

In collaboration with curators from the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), I was commissioned to design, formulate, and compound four unique and historically themed scents for the epic Making Her Mark Exhibit, which you can read about in my interview with the AGO’s Foyer Magazine. I was later invited to re-develop five custom scents for the AGO’s multi-modal Art Cart, such as a whiff of Elvis for the gallery’s iconic Andy Warhol painting, ‘Elvis I & II,’ and four other scents inspired by the works of Mark Rothko, James Tissot, Tom Thomson, and Gustave Caillebotte that are featured in the gallery’s permanent collections. Most recently, I collaborated again with the AGO on two uniquely atmospheric scents for the exhibit David Blackwood: Myth & Legend. 

Please see my practice page for a more detailed overview of the perspectives and orientations that inform my work.

Related media and press

Beyond my own publications, my perspectives and work are featured in scholarly books, television (ICI/CBC), radio (CBC’s Metro Morning), and print media (La Presse), interviews (Foyer Magazine), along with 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.

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. I have since taught courses at the secondary, post-secondary, graduate, and post-graduate level [my CCV is available upon request to academic hiring committees].

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 an M.A. and PhD from York University’s joint program in Communications and Culture. After completing my PhD, 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

• PhD, 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), certified secondary school teacher (Ontario College of Teachers) – current status: Inactive/Non-Practising.
• 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.

Please use my Contact form for professional inquiries.