From Principle Investigator Farzaneh Hemmasi (Assoc. Prof. Ethnomusicology, University of Toronto)
Research for “Sound and Music in Kensington Market” began in 2017 with the inspiration of University of Toronto’s Ethnography Lab‘s Kensington Market Research Project led by Professor Joshua Barker, in combination with the university’s Ethnomusicology Department. With Prof. Barker and the Ethnography Lab’s support, I began the project with a team of graduate students in the ethnomusicology program.
In 2018, I received an Insight Development Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to support the graduate student research component. This project is entitled Toronto Music City: The View from Kensington Market and is a collaborative research project that takes the City of Toronto’s 2016 “Music Strategy” rollout as an opportunity to investigate the intersections and divergences of cultural policy, new musical developments and already-existing musical scenes, businesses, and musicians.
In 2020, I was honoured to receive a Connaught Community Partnership Research Award to fund an ethnographic project called Keeping Kensington “Kensington:” Value, Affordability, and Culture in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Anthropologist and Ethnography Lab Senior Researcher Andrew Gilbert also made major contributions to the proposal. This project brings together university researchers and two community organizations, the Kensington Market Business Improvement Area (KMBIA) and Friends of Kensington Market (FOKM).
Methods
The Research Team
Principle Investigator: Farzaneh Hemmasi, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology
Faculty Collaborator: Joshua Barker, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Current UofT Graduate Student Researchers
Nil Basdurak | Ethnomusicology doctoral student
Hannah Brown | Musicology doctoral student
Wes Brunson | Anthropology doctoral student
Bernice Hoi Ching Cheung | Ethnomusicology doctoral student
Elijah Goldstein | Faculty of Music Undergraduate student
Kristen Graves | Ethnomusicology doctoral student
Dennis Lee | Ethnomusicology MA ’18, current Ethnomusicology doctoral student
Ryan Persadie | Ethnomusicology MA ’17, Women & Gender Studies doctoral student
Esther Wade | Ethnomusicology MA ’22
Past UofT Graduate Student Researchers
Helen Abbott | Ethnomusicology MA ’20
Jardena Gertler-Jaffe | Ethnomusicology MA ’17
Jennie Horton | Ethnomusicology MA ’16
Jon Wu | Ethnomusicology MA ’19