Camille Turner - First Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Daniels Faculty

photograph of Camille Turner, photographer Ebti Nabag.

Camille Turner, a celebrated Toronto-based artist and academic, has recently been announced as the first Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow from the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto.

Turner’s transdisciplinary artworks, exhibitions, performances, and projects have incorporated extensive research on the hidden history of slavery in Canada, as well as its omission from popular conceptions of national identity.

The Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program is run by the University, with the intent of increasing opportunities to hire postdoctoral fellows from underrepresented groups, specifically Indigenous and Black researchers. The two-year fellowship is tied to a $70,000 per-year salary, as well as a “start-up” fund of $5,000 per-year for research. As part of the Fellowship, Turner will utilize her Afronautic methodology to investigate slave ships built in Newfoundland, research that exists where history meets the intimately personal. Turner is a descendant of people abducted from Africa, forced into slavery, and carried as cargo on the infamous Middle Passage.

“Turner’s acute, critical research of the urban environment, and her innovative methodologies of provoking Black history into visual and sonic presence, will create a new discursive space within the Master of Visual Studies Studio and Curatorial Studies program, directly benefiting our faculty and students’ aspirations toward anti-racist equity in shaping the shared, living environment,” said Jean-Paul Kelly, director of the Daniels Faculty’s visual studies programs, in his letter of support for the Fellowship. Turner’s research will critically contribute to the Daniels Faculty’s emphasis on socially and environmentally responsible urban planning, community building, and social equity efforts.

Beyond the Afronautic Research Lab, Turner is well known for: Miss Canadiana’s Heritage and Cultural Walking Tours and Hometown Queen. She has lectured at the University of Toronto, the Toronto School of Art, and Algoma University. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design and is completing her PhD at York University, where she also completed her Masters of Environmental Studies.