PhD (in progress) , McGill University, ​Tiohti:áke/Montreal
Supervised by Dr. Matthew Hunter & Dr. Jonathan Sterne
Thesis: “Imaginary Ornithology: Dionisio Minaggio’s Birdscapes”

MA Art History, McGill University, Tiohti:áke/Montreal
Supervisor: Dr. Angela Vanhaelen
Thesis, “Death, Deformity, Decay: The Use of the Early Modern Freak as Memento Mori”

BA, University of King’s College, K'jipuktuk/Halifax
First Class Honours in Early Modern Studies and Anthropology
Supervisor: Dr. Jannette Vusich
Thesis, “The Early Modern Monster: On the Construction of Freakery in 17th Century Europe”

My PhD research is supported by CGSD SSHRC funding, as well as the generous support of McGill University.

I am the grateful recipient of a Museum of Jewish Montreal Microgrant for Creative Exploration, a GREAT Mobility Award (2022), the McGill Arts and Science Class of 1966 Award (2021), the Fred & Betty Price Award (2020), a Michael Smith Foreign Studies Supplement (2018) and a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master's Scholarship (2017).

2023 Film Screening and Artist Talk, “How to Hold Glass” a documentary screening at The Museum of Jewish Montreal (Tiohti:áke/Montreal)

2023 Conference Presentation, “Imaginary Ornithology: The More-Than-Human Migration of Minaggio’s Birdscapes”, Renaissance Society of America (Puerto Rico)

2022 Panel Presentation, “Against Body Normality: Damage and Disability Aesthetics”, Renaissance Society of America (Virtual)

2022 Guest Lecture, “‘Broken Art”: Disability Aesthetics, Archives, and Art Making”, NSCAD University (Kjipuktuk/Halifax)

2022 Guest Lecture, “The Disquiet of AI Art: Tech Materiality and Generative Art”, McGill University (Tiohti:áke/Montreal)

2022 Speaker for the Graduate Student Panel on Transatlantic Slavery, ”Turning Clay: David Drake’s Earthenware Poetics” NSCAD University (Kjipuktuk/Halifax)

2021 Workshop Presenter, ‘The Queer Art of Collage: Reconfiguring Our Worlds”, Machane Lev (Virtual)

2020 AHCS Speaker Series, ”The Many Lives of David Drake’s Earthenware: Engraved Poetry in 19th Century Edgefield”, McGill University (Tiohti:áke/Montreal)

2019, Conference Presenter, CHIASMI Italian Studies Conference ”Against Restoration, Against Body Normality”, Harvard University (The Massachusett Land/Cambridge)

2018, Guest Lecture. ”Gentileschi in Life and Art: Rereading Women’s Work Post-Nochlin” McGill University (Tiohti:áke/Montreal)

Events:

October 2023, Visual Art Exhibition at Kirkland Library, in collaboration with the “Nature Collective” (Tiohti:áke/Montreal)

Publications:

"Concatenation”: Syncretism in the Life Cycle of David Drake's Earthenware", in the anthology Creolization and Trans-Atlantic Blackness: The Visual and Material Cultures of Slavery, ed. Dr. Charmaine Nelson, Routledge Press.

My academic research explores birds, migration, extraction, and the surreal. Much of my creative work is similarly preoccupied.

My doctoral dissertation focuses on the extraordinary feathermosaics of Dionisio Minaggio, a gardener living in 17th-century Spanish-occupied Lombardy. Drawing on material eco-critical theory and Latin American and Iberian art history, this project explores the power and intricacies of avian archives. For more information on this project, you can read about Minaggio’s Feather Book under “Fragments”.

I am indebted to the guidance of Dr. Charmaine Nelson in how to do rigorous archival research and to consciously and compassionately apply critical race theory and decolonial analysis to my work.

I am continuously open to collaboration and conversation with other scholars and creators. Feel welcome to e-mail me if there is a project you would like to work on, an idea you want to share, or you have seen an interesting bird.