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. My current research focuses on the pedagogical affordances of materials, tools, and environments in contexts of advanced craft, trade, and arts practice that require specialized tools, materials, locations and highly skilled embodiments to learn and master. In addition to my research, I create mixed-media scent applications for learning, training, scholarly knowledge mobilization, and cultural heritage mediation. 

Detailed overview

My research program

Drawing on over 20 years of teaching experience in secondary and post-secondary education, I have directly observed the negative impacts of technological determinism, which hasn’t so much ‘revolutionized’ teaching and learning but paradoxically de-skilled learners and learning. These insights inform my graduate and post-doctoral research programs, which critique today’s disembodied and indirectly transmitted 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 focuses on the material and environmental ‘contingencies’ of physically embodied craft, trade, and arts practices that require specialized materials, tools, situated environments, and customized workflows to learn, develop, and master. More plainly, I am concerned with the ‘stuff’ (i.e., materials, tools, infrastructure) that is required to learn and develop skilled practices that are explicitly embodied and materials contingent (i.e., you cannot learn woodworking without the wood, tools, etc.). As my colleagues and I have observed, these highly materially contingent and embodied ways of knowing (as doing) are at risk of endangerment thanks to today’s increasingly ‘hands off’ educational models. 

My theoretical orientations

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 purely mental processing of indirectly acquired (representational) knowledge. In contrast with still dominant cognitivist orientations to learning, Gibson’s emphasis on affordances helps to call attention to the ‘stuff in the world’ that constitute a more materially contingent understanding of learning and perception (i.e., our eyes may see and our brain may process visual information, but we cannot read a book in the dark).

More plainly, from the Gibsonian orientation, humans and animals alike cannot ‘learn’ much of anything without the environments and things that ‘afford’ the opportunity to experience, perceive, and understand them. This is in contrast with the more indirectly acquired (i.e., second-hand) representational knowledge that is less meaningful without the experiences to marry to the words. This is not to dismiss the significance of the physiological and mental processes involved in perception, but to acknowledge the limitations of their overdetermination at the expense of accounting for the external material and environmental contingencies that make these internal perceptual processes possible. From this perspective, ecologically situated embodiment isn’t a ‘supplement’ to cognition but its alternative (see Alan Costall’s work for further perspective).

Accordingly, my work calls attention to the limitations of still dominant mind over matter notions of educating that reduce learning and teaching to a crude mechanistic, computer-like input-output system of informational accrual, which Gibson similarly critiqued. This orientation, to the human, physical, material and in the world contingencies of learning, teaching, communicating, and making, also informs my educational philosophy, research methodologies, and hands-on approaches to knowledge mobilization.

Knowledge mobilization

 As my colleagues and I explain in our recent publications, much of what is touted as an ‘innovative’ approach to educating merely applies a new interface over outdated models of teaching-as-transmission and curriculum-as-content, which reflects the conceits of the algorithmic turn. My emphasis on more directly acquired, situated, and tangible/hands-on approaches to learning as doing intervenes on these more indirectly-acquired, information-centric notions of educating I have called ‘educational artifice.’ 

My emphasis on the material and authentically situated (i.e., site/location-specific) contingencies of learning with real materials, real tools, and the real contexts in which real learning is actually undertaken 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 dimensions of learning-as-through 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 once resourced by institutions (e.g., shop class, woodworking, arts programs, physical education, music, and so on).

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 with an emphasis on smelling as a physically situated practice that we should all be doing all the time. 

Aroma, through a multimodal lens

As my doctoral research program evolved, I became more interested in the extra-social dimensions of scent beyond its conventional representations in media and culture as a kind of ‘trigger’ for physiological or affective responses. I wanted to focus, instead, on the pedagogical, material, and structural contingencies that are engaged when we learn with and through aromatic materials in practice. While there is an ever-growing body of scholarship related to sociological or cultural theorizings of smell and the senses, my work champions the insights and expertise of aromatic practitioners such as perfumers, flavourists, sensory evaluators, and chemists whose extra-disciplinary knowledge is generated with and through applied practice. 

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 tangibly embodied interactions.

My practice

In addition to my work as a researcher, I create experimental and highly technical scent applications for scholarly research and knowledge mobilization purposes 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, who gave me the foundation of my perfumery knowledge. 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. 

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 that is intended to bring us back into connection with this under-valued modality of experience.

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. 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. 

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.