Experimentation.     Collaboration.    Study.

Experimentation.     Collaboration.    Study.

about

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about

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Dr. Mark V. Campbell, Lab Director


Dr. Mark V. Campbell is a DJ, scholar and curator. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations and notions of the human. Dr. Campbell is Associate Chair in the Arts, Culture and Media department, the 2020-21 Jackman Humanities Institute UTSC Fellow and a Connaught Early Career Fellow at the University of Toronto. In 2015 Mark was appointed Member of the Board at the Ontario Arts Council and has served on juries for the Toronto Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The United Way Peel, Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and the City of Toronto.


Dr. Campbell is Principal Investigator in the SSHRC funded research project, Hip Hop Archives: The Poetics and Potentials of Knowledge Production. As co-founder of the Bigger than Hip Hop radio show in 1997 and founder at Northside Hip Hop Archive in 2010, Mark has spent two decades embedded within the Toronto hip hop scene operating from community engaged praxis as both a DJ and a Curator. His books include; We Still Here: Hip Hop in North of the 49th Parallel with Dr. Charity Marsh (2020) and …Everything Remains Raw: Photographing Toronto hip hop Culture from Analogue to Digital as part of the 2018 Contact Festival exhibition at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.


Safia Siad, Project Manager

Safia Siad is an independent curator and DJ. Themes of joy, loving as resistance, liberation, hope, and care inform her practice. She was recently a curator-in-residence at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and curated interlude at The Art Gallery of Burlington which brought together works that meditate on the concept of rest and necessary spaces carved out for pause and preservation. Her work focuses on placemaking and archive building for those who rarely get to witness themselves reflected in art and media along with bridging the gap between institutional and non-institutional ways of teaching and learning.


Dr. Pablo Herrera Veitia, Postdoctoral Fellow


Pablo D. Herrera Veitia obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of St. Andrews. He is a scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of Orisa worship, hip hop studies and multimodal ethnography. His research explores what it means to be Afro-Cuban in post-socialist Havana and follows divinatory figures in the Odù Ifá literary corpus as primary conceptual sources. As one of Cuba’s pioneering Afro-Cuban rap music producers, Herrera Veitia proposes that understanding Afro-Cubaneity today may require a focus on recent shifts in the audible character of Havana and how the city’s sonorous dimension presents itself as a site where citizens contest state ideology through loud and discrete amplification practices. Herrera Veitia is a 2018-2019 Nasir Jones Fellowship recipient at the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University. His writing has appeared in Revista Casa de las Americas, Metronome's documenta 12 Magazines issue, and OkayAfrica.com. He has also collaborated on several major academic research projects on rap and reggaeton music in Havana, including Sujatha Fernandez's Cuba Represent and Close to the Edge, Tanya Saunders's Cuban Underground Hiphop; Marc Perry's Negro Soy Yo; and Geoff Baker's Buena Vista in the Club.


Ayse Barut, Research Assistant


Ayşe Barut is a music enthusiast and an upcoming cultural worker/advocate. Specializing in arts management, her 6+ years of practice led her to play a key role in amplifying and enriching the musical tapestry of Canada. Her experience in the arts and culture sector along with the music industry ranges from education & outreach, music export, publicity, artist relations, and event management and includes several Canadian organizations such as the Corporation of Massey & Roy Thomson Hall, Hart House, NXNE, Soundstreams, Porchfront Collective, Trade Routes, and 6ixBuzzTV.

In 2020, Ayşe was chosen as a scholar-in-residence for the Jackman Humanities Institute and worked on "The Poetics and Potentials of Hip-Hop Archives" led by Dr. Mark V. Campbell. She also assisted on multiple music-based research projects and that led her to co-wrote "#djlife During the Pandemic: Reflections from DJs Rearranging Relations and Improvising Continuity" at Critical Studies in Improvisation/ Études critiques en improvisation Journal with Dr. Mark V. Campbell.

Ayşe is currently working at Radio FWD as well as the University of Toronto to produce content for the Northside Hip Hop Archive. Her biggest passion is to create a positive impact in communities through the bridges built between audiences and artists and she is honored to be a part of the Afrosonic Innovations Lab.


Marcus Singleton, PhD Candidate


Critical Thinking Hip-Hop Artist | Critical Hip-Hop Educator | Black Youth Advocate | PhD Student

Peace. My name is marcus (iomos marad) singleton. I am an educator, an advocate for Black students/ youth, and a critical thinking Hip-Hop artist. I am from the South Side of Chicago Englewood community. I am a second-year Ph.D. student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto in the Social Justice Department under the supervision of dr. rosalind hampton.

The plan is to work with Black youth in formal and informal settings transnationally (Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, and Montreal) to build community-based learning practices. The goal is to collaborate with Black students and learn through their interactions with each other as they engage in critical conversations across cities and borders. I would love to create a global classroom as counter space for Black students to come together to talk about their lives and learning experiences for the possibility of developing new learning practices that are more beneficial for their needs.

As a critical thinking Hip-Hop artist, I have released five independent projects. I have opened for various artists such as KRS-One, Mos Def, Slum Village, Raekwon, Little Brother, Lupe Fiasco, The Hieroglyphics, Pete Rock, Immortal Technique, and the Boot Camp Clik, to name a few. I have also collaborated with J-Live, Oddisee, Finale, Thaione Davis, and other Hip-Hop artists.



Catherine Grant, PhD Candidate


Catherine Grant-Wata is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation focuses on the history of Jamaican culture and placemaking in Toronto, Canada and Birmingham, England 1962-1981. Catherine completed her MA at York University, The Darkside of the Canadian Dream: A History of Housing Discrimination in Toronto 1961-1977 in August 2020. Catherine writes poetry and collects reggae records in her free time.



Dr. Myrtle D. Millaires, Research Associate


Dr. Myrtle D. Millares is a classical pianist with an Honours BA in Philosophy, Music History/Theory, and French, and a Bachelor of Music. A music educator and researcher, she specializes in narrative inquiry that focuses on hip-hop communities of practice.

Her interests include the role of Philippine artists in the development of Toronto hip-hop, the effect of colonial ideologies on institutional music study and musician identity, and the ways that hip-hop creative processes can inform decolonizing, anti-racist pedagogies.

She is co-founder of Climate Pledge Collective, which provides tools for individual action and activism to mitigate the effects of our climate crisis through climate justice.



Hetvi Patel, Research Assistant


Hetvi completed her undergrad degree from the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), majoring in Human Biology and Health Studies (Population Health). Her research interests include implementation science, health promotion, and music. She is currently working as a Research Assistant analyzing the correlation between Hip-Hop and well-being under Professor Mark Campbell. In the future, she plans to pursue a Doctor of Podiatric Medicine degree where she can use a holistic approach to interact with her patients. During her free time, she enjoys hiking, photography and dancing.


Aaron Manswell, PhD Candidate


Aaron Manswell is a composer from Toronto, Ontario. His style of writing is heavily influenced by the genres of R&B, Classical, and Gospel music. His songs have been performed by choirs including the Grand Philharmonic Choir, Nathaniel Dett Chorale, and the Oakwood University Aeolians, and is the winner of the 2022 Grand Philharmonic Choir Canada-wide Composition Contest. As a music producer, he has worked with various artists including being the Music Director for JUNO Award-winning R&B artist, Savannah Ré. As a film composer, he wrote the original score for the sci-fi film “H.E.N.R.I” (Katarzyna Kochany & Ryan Singh) and “Soap Dish” (Troy Crossfield & Sheronna Osbourne), premiered at the Toronto and Montreal Black Film Festivals. As an educator, he is the former Wind Band Conductor at Crawford Adventist Academy, leading the concert bands to city-wide awards. Manswell has earned music composition degrees from Oakwood University and the University of Memphis and is currently the composer-in-residence for the McMillan Singers at the University of Toronto where he is completing his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition.


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