Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University

Dr. Miranda Campbell is an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Industries. Her research focuses on creative employment, youth culture, and small-scale and emerging forms of creative practice. She is the author of Reimagining the Creative Industries: Youth Creative Work, Communities of Care (Routledge, 2022) and How to Care More: Seven Skills for Personal and Social Change  (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Her book, Out of the Basement: Youth Cultural Production in Practice and in Policy (McGill Queen’s University Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the Donner Prize for the best public policy book by a Canadian.

Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University

Dr. Cheryl Thompson is the author of Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty (2021) and Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture (2019). Dr. Thompson is currently director of Black Creative Lab, which extends the pedagogy of THF470: Black Creative Practices, an open elective course that unpacks Black creative origins, forms, and styles. Black Creative Lab's projects include, MobaProjects, is a digital mapping of Black archival collections in Ontario; BREC, a collection and database that catalogues blackface as performance and Black community's resistance to it across time and space. 

Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University

Dr. Zhixi Zhuang (MCIP, RPP) is a Registered Professional Planner, an Associate Professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Academic Director of the Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement. Her research explores the growing urban diversity in Canadian cities and how city-builders can instil the values of equity and inclusion into planning policies and practices.

Assistant Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University

Salman Rana is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Industries and the School of Professional Music. He’s a lawyer and legal theorist. His practice based research focuses on law and culture, socio-legal theory, legal pluralism, Hip Hop culture, music law, copyright and human rights. As a lawyer, Salman continues to work on projects ranging from independent releases to major label projects, licensing and music synchronization deals for film and advertising.

Project Manager

Nala Haileselassie is a multidisciplinary artist from tkaronto completing her BFA in Film Studies at TMU. working from the lineage of black feminist film and experimental documentary, her research is focused on the living archive of black people globally in relation to documentary ethics, authorship and archives.

Research Assistant

Maia Taruc-Pilling (she/they) is a first year masters student at TMU studying Culture and Communication. A graduate from the University of Toronto’s Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity, and a musician herself, Maia is interested in researching the barriers to accessing music performance spaces and opportunities among migrants in the city.