Short bio

I am a Canadian post-doctoral researcher-practitioner, adjunct part-time faculty at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), and founder of the Aroma Inquiry Lab at TMU’s Responsive Ecologies Lab (RELab). In my current role as a co-principal investigator on several in-progress grants, I am researching the material contingencies (i.e., resources, physical infrastructure, etc) required to learn and develop skills in domains of physically embodied, tacit, and multimodal craft, trade, and arts practices that require specialised materials, tools, situated environments and customised workflows to undertake. Ancillary to my research, I create mixed-media scent applications for specialised training, research prototypes, cultural heritage mediation, and arts interpretation. The relationship between my research and practice is explained in more detail below. Please see my practice page for further elaboration on the paradigms and perspectives that underwrite my orientation to scent design.

My current research program

Drawing on over 20 years of teaching experience as a secondary, post-secondary, graduate, and post-graduate level instructor, I have directly observed the increasingly negative impacts of a technologically deterministic agenda in education, which underwrites the more critical questions that inform my research program. Despite my background as an early adopter of educational technologies and former new media professional, I now argue that the overdetermination of digital technology hasn’t so much ‘revolutionised’ education but, paradoxically, de-skilled learners and teachers. This has also put our public educational institutions at risk of corporate capture via increasingly automated and algorithmic schemes of fast credentialing. These insights inform the development of my graduate and post-doctoral research program focus, which critiques screen-biased and logocentric paradigms of digitally mediated information culture to focus, instead, on dimensions of learning with and through materials, tools, and environments that are presently at risk of endangerment thanks to the destructive impact of speculative algorithmic products across the arts, trades, industries, and public sectors that I write about here.

My current research program investigates the material and structural contingencies of multimodal learning, communication, and making in contexts of skilled craft, the arts, and trades that involve tacitly embodied hands-on practice with and through physical materials, specialised tools, and situated environments and workflows. 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, substances, and physical phenomena and not merely an outcome of interior mental processing or the ‘accrual’ 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 algorithmic agendas for education merely stick 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 also concerned with over-determination of indirectly-acquired, information-centric and content–driven models of educating that constitute what I term ‘educational artifice.’

In my current role as a co-principal investigator on several in-progress research grants, I am examining and documenting the material contingencies of literacy, learning, and skills development, which are constituted with and through real environments, with real tools, overseen by real (human) practitioners. My current focus on these highly 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 focus on the material contingencies of learning is intended to address established gaps in educational narratives that have prioritised indirectly acquired and mind-over-matter notions of learning at the expense of any accounting for the very real and in-the-world material resources that are increasingly ‘sold separately’ at every level of education – from k-12 to graduate education and into professional certification – whereby learners are increasingly responsible to self-fund missing materials and access to infrastructure formerly resourced by institutions.

Academic knowledge mobilisation

As a post-doctoral researcher with an adjunct appointment with Toronto Metropolitan University, I continue to develop my trans-disciplinary research program and broad-based research interests. My scholarly work is published in 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, 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 mell walks in Toronto and Vancouver (Canada) to explore the use of these practices in the context of multimodal learning.

As my doctoral research program evolved, I became more interested in the extra-social dimensions of scent beyond its dominant use as a kind of prompt for affective or subjective self-reflection/expression to consider the more material dimensions that are required to learn with and through aromatic materials in practice. My interest in sourcing, collecting, and creating original customised aromatic learning resources, which was part of the inspiration for the development of the Aroma Inquiry Lab, which I founded in 2013 at Toronto Metropolitan University.  

I have since mobilized insights developed from 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 research prototypes. 

My practice

In addition to my work as a researcher, I create non-commercial multi-modal learning objects for purposes of scholarly research and educational knowledge mobilisation, with a focus on the missing modality of aroma. My emphasis on the underlying materiality of communicative modalities (such as aroma), rather than their sensorial effects, also reflects the distinction between learning with and through materials in an active practice of inquiry rather than our physiological or affective ‘responses’ to these materials at the site of consumption. For the maker, a material is understood not by how it makes them ‘feel’ but what it does and how it is used in practice. 

My unconventional path to scent creation begins with the development of the Aroma Inquiry Lab in 2013, which was initially intended as a mini archive and learning environment to explore aromatic materials insights developed during my doctoral field work studies of scent-themed interactions and practices of cultural mediation in Grasse, France and related explorations of smell walking/mapping. During my doctoral studies, I became interested in learning some of the basic principles of perfumery as they applied to learning, starting with American perfumer Mandy Aftel’s self-study perfume workbook, which is a mini course in perfumery intended for beginners. After I defended my doctorate, I enrolled in classes with Aftel at-home studio in Berkeley. I later expanded these foundations with further study in the principles and technical necessities of synthetic materials through a combination of self-study, additional courses, and mentorship from perfumers working in mixed-media applications (naturals and synthetics). 

Drawing on my studies of perfumery and ongoing exploration of experimental and mixed-media (both synthetic and natural) applications, the fragrant applications (i.e., format) I work in are designed for pedagogical (rather than commercial) purposes of learning, training, communication, and cultural mediation as opposed to purely aesthetic or functional fragrance applications. As my scent practice is ancillary to a more broad-based research program that extends to many other contexts of practice (and materials) beyond aroma, I refer to myself as a researcher-practitioner, rather than perfumer or so-called ‘olfactory’ artist. While my practice is, technically, perfumery, the applications I work in are very different from conventional fragrance products or artistic projects underwritten by olfactory claims (i.e., exposure to my work will trigger some sort of magical physiological or emotional response …). Instead, I believe my work is simply a call to context and a means of learning something about the ‘stuff’ that’s on the other side of the nose – not just our ‘responses’ to those things.

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, we might learn how to decode and become fluent in the language of aroma as a communicative modality. From the standpoint of making, this extends to learning what a given material has to express and how it interacts with and transforms other raw materials, in contrast an impulse to inscribe ourselves over modality that is more spoken for than speaking.

To this end, I have developed original mixed media aromatic applications for scholarly knowledge mobilisation, 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. Even when I have a particular theme in mind, the most interesting work is developed in collaboration with my materials – rather than at them. As a woodworker must enter into the grain of the specific wood they are using, so too is composition contingent on a conversation with the properties, qualities, and characteristics of materials, rather than projecting our ideas and concepts onto materials.

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 paradigms, 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.