As part of its ongoing strategy to strengthen research excellence, OCAD University’s Office of Research and Innovation has awarded a second round of seed funding to 10 faculty members who are leading research projects.
Each recipient receives $5,000, drawn from funding that the University receives through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Institutional Grant program. Seed funding is awarded by the Office of Research and Innovation following an open call for applications and an internal review of proposed research projects.
RECIPIENTS AND THEIR PROJECTS
Jay Irizawa, Lead applicant
Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director, Interdisciplinary Art Media Design, School of Graduate Studies
Peter Morin, Co-applicant
Associate Professor, Faculty of Art
Project: “Trouble Makers: Building a Digital-Human Gathering Space for Ancestral/Future Trouble Makers”
What is a Trouble Maker? Trouble Makers operate in ancient knowledge. They dream of the future(s). They are shapeshifters, upstream swimmers, and time travellers. They are kin from stories that are familiar to us: Coyote, Raven, Wisakedjak, Nanabush, Tanuki, Napi, Hanuman, Jade Fox, Ananse and more.
Funding for this research project will build a digital site to bring together these Ancestral Trouble Makers to be profiled, to gather, to be seen, to be acknowledged, and to share with/from their diverse research practices. This project builds upon previously funded work led Irizawa and Morin.
The project’s objectives are to:
The project will build a stronger website and involve historical research on Trouble Makers globally, building profiles of those historical Trouble Makers, along with continuing to document and upload our past trouble making work. The website will bring together, and celebrate, Trouble Makers from diverse Indigenous, Black and People of Colour ancestries, and interdisciplinary research/creative backgrounds. The website will also archive research/creation and support students in publishing their work on trouble making in research/creation.
Dr. Fidelia Lam
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science
Project: “Do-it-Together: Media Making Towards Envisioning and Building Sustainable Third Spaces”
The seed funding is supporting Dr. Lam in preparing a submission to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a Knowledge Synthesis Grant, in concert with Dr. Lam’s Visiting Scholar position at the University of Nottingham-Ningbo China. Funds are also being used for OCAD U to participate in larger joint project, assisting in a literature review and synthesis on “Do-it-Together,” outreach, workshop planning and facilitation.
The larger project looks at both the hyper-local creation of community third spaces in East Asia, and the possibility of transnational and transcultural dialogue between these spaces and Asian-Canadian third spaces. Community third spaces in this project are seen as grassroots organizations organized independently from major institutional support.
The Do-It-Together project focuses on building and understanding the role of, and intersections, between the space’s role in fostering community, shared pedagogy, place-making and creativity as third spaces and how they might become more sustainable given end-stage capitalism’s accelerations.
Some of the project’s broader objectives are to host a series of cross-cultural workshops that produce and deepen feelings and understandings of community between scholars (traditional and non-traditional) creatives and build knowledge around the issues faced by formal/informal third spaces in East Asia and explore possible solutions with those community members.
Michael Lee Poy
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Design
Project: “Moko Jumbie apparatus (stilt) and safety training equipment”
This research project holds significant cultural, educational and technological value. By focusing on the Moko Jumbie—a living Afro-Caribbean masquerade tradition that combines performance, balance, and craft—this project is bridging ancestral knowledge systems with contemporary design and fabrication methods.
The project is contributing to both cultural preservation and innovation, ensuring that a practice rooted in African spiritual and communal traditions continues to evolve within modern contexts.
From a design and engineering perspective, the research is advancing knowledge in materials testing, ergonomics, and biomechanics applied to wearable performance structures. The development of lighter, stronger, and safer stilts has direct implications for practitioners, performers and educators who engage in stilt-based arts and physical theatre globally.
Establishing health, safety, and training standards will also create a framework for sustainable and inclusive participation—particularly for youth and new learners.
Academically, the project is supporting decolonizing research and pedagogy by validating community-based and embodied learning methodologies within an institutional context. It recognizes that cultural practices such as Moko Jumbie performance are not only artistic but also pedagogical systems that embody values of Responsibility, Respect, Relationship, and Reciprocity—aligned with Indigenous and African learning philosophies.
Socially, the project is strengthening cross-cultural connections between Toronto and Trinidad, fostering dialogue between diaspora communities and educational institutions. By merging creative research, cultural continuity, and material experimentation, the Moko Jumbie research is redefining how art, design, and performance can serve as vehicles for empowerment, resilience, and intercultural understanding.
Dr. Kelsey Pugh
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science
Project: “Comparative Anatomy of the Nuchal Region in Understanding the Origin the Human Lineage”
The primary goal of this research project is to reevaluate the morphology of the posterior aspect of the cranium in apes and humans (hominoids) as it relates to the origin of bipedalism. Bipedalism refers to the unique way that humans move around our environment on two legs.
This evolutionary novelty is thought to be among the first behaviours that set humans apart from other hominoids at our origin and is thus a defining feature of our lineage. The anatomy of the neck, or nuchal, muscle attachment sites on the posterior cranium in extinct members of the human lineage (hominins) has long been interpreted as an anatomical correlate of this behaviour. Investigating the pattern and timing of evolutionary changes in nuchal musculature will provide new insights into the origins of bipedalism and help evaluate the evolutionary significance of key fossils.
From a paleoanthropological perspective, a better understanding of the evolution of nuchal region anatomy is necessary for a more comprehensive picture of the evolution of bipedalism. When and where the human lineage originated and which of our unique anatomical features evolved first are among the central questions motivating the field of paleoanthropology.
Research on this topic frequently garners interest from the popular press, thus serving as an excellent conduit to engage the public in scientific research and outreach. In the classroom at OCAD U, this work can be tied to course material in human and comparative anatomy to demonstrate to undergraduate students the ongoing importance of basic scientific research in learning about ourselves as a species.
This seed funding will facilitate research that will form the first part of a broader project to comprehensively evaluate evolutionary (phylogenetic) relationships among fossil and extant hominoids. The collected data and the initial results will enable a more competitive application to the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Colleen Reid
Professor, Faculty of Design
Project: “City Policy Responses to Climate Change: Review of Best Practices”
This project will identify, compare and assess varying methodologies for assessing ‘successful’ green cities and ‘green city’ projects and identify ‘success markers’ for green cities most commonly accepted in the built space community. This will involve identifying and collecting data on four cities (Toronto and Vancouver and two international cities of similar size and climate change), which have successfully implemented sustainability and resilience policies for their respective city’s development.
Varying methodologies for implementing climate change protocols, within these cities and their structures, will be identified and the relationship to identified success markers and data will be documented.
The project will develop a methodology, using data visualization, to aid in the comprehension and comparison of differing policy approaches withing the context of differing urban situations. Variations include climate, demographics, population, country size, physical size, political situation, relationship with the Paris Agreement and the United Nations, the city’s 2030 and 2050 goals, and policy types.
Dr. Lori Riva (co-principal investigator)
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science
Dr. Michelle Miller (co-principal investigator)
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Project: “Making Sustainability Pedagogies through Arts-based Study Groups”
The goal of this project is to run a pilot study, leading to the launch of a larger research project, “Making Sustainability Pedagogies through Arts-based Study Groups.” This pilot study will focus on one of the themes the researchers plan to explore in their larger research study and involve three activities as part of collecting data and testing the methodologies of their proposal to a federal government funding agency:
This pilot study will invite participants to co-create knowledge about climate futures and benefit from the sense of agency that futuring work inspires (McGonigal, 2023), combatting eco-anxiety and overwhelm in the face of precarity. By looking to more-than-human worlds of mutual flourishing, relationality and entwinement, and then constructing artefacts for imagined futures, the researchers will consider new possible modes of relationship and orientations to the problems of the Anthropocene.
Annie Tung
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Design
Project: “Forged Identities: Canadian Jewellery and Metalsmithing Today”
This project will develop the methodological framework and pilot entries for a biographical directory of contemporary Canadian studio jewellers and metalsmiths (2015 to present). Over a 12-month period, research activities will include conducting a literature review mapping scholarship gaps; developing decolonial documentation criteria and ethical protocols; creating 15 to 25 pilot entries representing geographic and demographic diversity; and establishing partnerships with craft councils and art and design postsecondary Indigenous centers. These activities will generate preliminary findings, test database infrastructure, and build networks that will be leveraged to apply for a grant from a federal funding agency.
This project is critically needed as Canadian craft, jewelry and metalsmithing programs face closure due to chronic underfunding, threatening practitioner livelihoods and intergenerational knowledge transmission. Documenting diverse contemporary practices counters erasure of craft disciplines, as well as Indigenous, Black and People of Colour and marginalized makers, while demonstrating the discipline's cultural and economic significance to communities nationwide.
Dr. Emma Westecott
Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science
Project: “Game Sketching”
The research project will investigate game sketching as a method of research-creation in digital media. Game sketching refers to the generative, exploratory phase of game development where ideas are expressed through rapid, iterative making.
Unlike prototyping, sketching emphasizes conceptual development and critical engagement over refinement and evaluation. This method encourages early-stage exploration of game concepts using a range of accessible technologies and methodologies to quickly build and test new interface paradigms.
Building on Dr. Westecott’s foundational work, this project will explore how game sketching can be used to activate preferred futures, engage with sociopolitical themes, and produce knowledge through creative practice.
The research will be conducted through a combination of studio-based inquiry, pedagogical experimentation and reflective analysis. It will also advance innovative methodologies that bridge theory and practice, and by fostering inclusive, interdisciplinary approaches to digital creation.