Treva Legassie

SSHRC Funded Postdoctoral Fellow

E: trevamichelle@gmail.com

Treva Legassie is a SSHRC funded postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University in the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology leading the project Sounding the Land: Soundwalking as transformative practice in the era of the climate crisis. Legassie holds a PhD in Communication Studies from Concordia University, and an MA in Contemporary Art History and BFA in Curatorial Practice from OCAD University. Her research-creation practice weaves together curation, listening, walking and visual art to engage the spatial politics of urban change through artistic modes of socio-political critique.

Her thinking-making practice tends to ‘urban-natural spaces;’ those wild zones that defy human development and settler desires to control Land and nature. Legassie has curated site specific exhibitions for Nuit Blanche Toronto, walks along Wonscontonach (Don River) and Port Lands and curated and designed the web-based exhibition improvement becomes a wall, and the river meanders still (2023). Legassie is co-director of the Curatorial Research-Creation Collective. Her writing has been published in RACAR, PUBLIC Journal, and The Senses & Society. She has also curated new media based exhibitions such as improvement becomes a wall, and the river meanders still (2022/2024), Femynynytees (2018), #NATURE (2016) and Influenc(Ed.) Machines.

RESEARCH AREAS

Soundwalking, Acoustic Ecology, Field Recording, Cities, Digital Curation, Digital Art, Climate Change, Research-Creation

EDUCATION

• Ph.D. in Communication Studies, Concordia University
• MA in Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories, OCAD University
• BFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice, OCAD University

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Legassie, Treva. “Machinic Expressivity: Performative Encounters with AI in the work of Nell Tenhaaf and Norman White,” in Robot Theatres: Collisions in Performing and Social Robotics, edited by Hilary Bergen, Eric Mullis, Benny Simon and Sydney Skybetter. London: Routledge, 2025. (forthcoming book chapter)  

Legassie, Treva. “From John Cage to the Outdoor School: Activating the ‘minor’ through Mycological Forays.” RACAR: The Sources of Research-Creation: Historical and Multicultural Perspectives 48, no. 3 (2023): 105-119.

Legassie, Treva, Matthew Robin-Nye and karen wong. “A Latento for Curation as Research-Creation,” in Media, Practice and Theory: tracking emergent thresholds of experience, edited by Nicole De Brabandere, 191-210. Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2023.

Pullen, Treva Michelle. “Skawennati’s TimeTraveller™: Deconstructing the Colonial Matrix in Virtual Reality.” ALTERNATIVE: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 12 no.3 (2016): 236-249.