I have been at Western University since 2020 and teach on the Creative Arts and Production (CAP) and Media and Communications Studies (MACS) programs. This year I'm teaching Introduction to Creative Arts (CA1020), Mediated Creativity (a third-year special topics course cross-listed with CAP and MACS), and Memory, Media, and Activism (a 4th-year MACS seminar).  

Prior to arriving at Western, I taught a range of topics in literature, drama, and the history of theatre and performance and focused my research and scholarly output on the late British playwright and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter. I have two books about Pinter along with a number of journal articles and book chapters and have been an editorial board member of The Harold Pinter Review, a journal dedicated to the study of Pinter and modern and contemporary drama. I have also published essays on other British playwrights.

My teaching is informed by my diverse background in the arts. My PhD is in English, with a specialization in drama, and I have worked as a professional musician – performing, recording, composing, and teaching – and continue to perform with bands and compose original music. I have also worked in show production as a carpenter and audio technician and have experience as an actor, creative writer, and dramaturg.

Since arriving at Western, I have developed several new research projects, all of which are inspired by my expanding interest in both creativity and social memory--two essential features of humans and of living. On the one hand, I'm interested to better understand how capitalism needs creativity and social memory to function and evolve and, moreover, what happens to them both given this arrangement. On the other hand, I'm interested to identify how creativity and social memory can help us to engage critically with capitalism and even navigate the many challenges engendered by it.           

My central research project, Forest City Memories, examines the city of London, Ontario with a concern to identify and better understand how representations of the past in public spaces affect what communities remember and how they remember. The project engages critically with key examples of memorial culture in London, as well as in other cities, and is expanding to collaborate with community partners interested in London’s history and the politics of memory. At the margins of the Forest City Memories project and as a result of teaching my course Memory, Media, and Activism, I have been thinking and writing about how social memory is being affected by the intensive promotion of individualistic behaviours and private property under contemporary capitalism.            

I am open to supervising students with interests and expertise in one or more of the following areas: creativity; the creative industries; memory studies; media and cultural studies; media and performance; media and music; activism and the arts; the social life and politics of affect.