Friends and Colleagues I’m so happy to announce that on June 26th, 2026, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation entitled Walking Dundas Street: Critical Practices of Space and Public Memory Through Scenographic Chorography.
A big thank you to my thoughtful and inspiring committee members Dr. Natalie Alvarez, and Dr. Dave Colangelo, and especially my supervisor Dr. Blake Fitzpatrick. I am also incredibly grateful for the insights offered by my external readers and examiners, Dr. Samantha Wehbi (Toronto metropolitan University), and Dr. Deirdre Heddon (University of Glasgow)
You can read an abstract of my dissertation below, and see a few pictures from the defence, as well as the final designed form of my dissertation. It has been a huge process to get here and I could not have done this without the wonderful support of my wife Ellie, my family, my friends, and the whole intellectual and artistic community that has nutured and sustained me!
ABSTRACT: Walking Dundas Street: Critical Practices of Space and Public Memory Through Scenographic Chorography.
“Walking Dundas Street: Critical Practices of Space and Public Memory through Scenographic Chorography” sets out how my experiences as the author of the Let’s Rename Dundas Street online petition and an active participant in the campaign to rename Dundas Street in Toronto, have led me to develop a movement-based research-creation methodology that I call “scenographic chorography.”
Using Dundas Street and its environs as a laboratory, I explore how walking and photographing one of Toronto’s most historic, longest, and contentiously named thoroughfares raised questions about the physical roadway, its name, and how it has been historically and contemporaneously practiced as a spatial technology of colonial world building. Through written exegesis and artistic production, I describe and demonstrate how scenographic chorography was developed through sustained engagement with Toronto’s mnemonic environment, including the creation of walking tours of Toronto Metropolitan University’s campus, Toronto’s PATH system, Dundas Street itself, and via a series of sceno-chorographic artist books. Taken together, I propose this text, its attendant methodology, and artistic outputs, as a means of thinking through the role of movement in affirming and contesting dominant spatial narratives, represented by colonial monuments and toponyms, toward recovering or reimagining novel approaches to commemoration. Through creative approaches to research and education this interdisciplinary study engages with a wide-range of fields including geography, history and heritage, architecture, urban planning, and creative approaches to research and education, within these disciplines and frameworks. In doing so, this dissertation makes a unique contribution to the fields of memory, landscape, and performance studies.
WALKING DUNDAS STREET: PRACTICES OF SPACE & PUBLIC MEMORY THROUGH SCENOGRAPHIC CHOROGRAPHY
Read the full dissertation here
THE DISSERTATION
THE DEFENCE & THE CELEBRATIONS
