Every year, OCAD University presents research excellence awards to recognize faculty members for their innovative contributions to research and celebrate distinguished and early-stage research activities.
The recipient of the 2024-25 OCAD University Award for Distinguished Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity is Associate Dean Dr. Charles Reeve in the Faculty of Arts and Science. This award recognizes faculty members for their outstanding portfolio of research, scholarship and creative activity and the impact that this activity has had across a broad spectrum of art and design research and practice internationally. The award also recognizes contributions toward undergraduate and graduate research and training.
Dr. Charles Reeve (left), Julia Rose Sutherland (right).
The recipient of the 2024-25 OCAD University Award for Excellence in Early-Stage Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity is Assistant Professor Julia Rose Sutherland in the Faculty of Design. Sutherland is also special advisor to the provost on Indigenous initiatives, cross-appointed to the Indigenous Visual Culture program and co-director of the OCAD U Sustainable Colour Lab. This award recognizes recently appointed faculty members for their outstanding promise to be distinguished researchers, scholars, artists and designers within a university context.
OCAD University Award for Distinguished Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity | Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts and Science, Dr. Charles Reeve
Dr. Reeve received this award in recognition of his research on the contemporary, visual and beyond, extending into numerous eras and modes of expression.
As Onsite Gallery's first curator, he led a program mirroring OCAD U's international profile, challenging expectations of what an art and design gallery could be. This led to several landmark exhibitions and explorations of themes such as inclusive fashion, contemporary glass and global poverty reduction.
He is the author of Artists and Their Autobiographies: From Today to the Renaissance and Back, a co-editor of To Hell with Poverty and Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design and Maternity, and a co-producer of the podcast Renewing the World, which explores the contemporary culture of maternality and mothering.
Dr. Reeve has curated numerous exhibitions and has written widely on modern and contemporary art and culture for publications such as frieze, Art History, RACAR, Biography, a/b, the London Review of Books, the Literary Review of Canada and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
OCAD University Award for Excellence in Early-Stage Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity | Assistant Professor Julia Rose Sutherland
Assistant Professor Sutherland received the award for her research on land-based colours, ethical foraging and land collaborations. As a participant in the Sustainable Futures Faculty Fellowship, Lessons from The Land: Textiles Dyeing MAAD, she has enriched student inquiry on sustainability by exploring dyeing techniques through a decolonized, land-based lens.
She is a co-director of OCAD U's Sustainable Colour Lab, which opened in the fall of 2024. The lab explores relational approaches to place, space and time, emphasizing sourcing pigments and materials from local, ethically produced sites. The research centres on critical cultural inquiries and collaborative partnerships with Indigenous communities and makers, such as Beam Paints, to foster supportive communities of practice rooted in land-based pedagogies.
By making knowledge through material, form, and practice, the lab aims to develop a holistic production process that considers the entire lifecycle of art and design, from source to final form, therefore encouraging a deeper understanding of individual impact while advocating for the divestment from plastics, petroleum-based solvents and volatile organic compounds.
Sutherland has explored identity and empathy through international showcases and solo exhibitions such as GINA'MATIMG and Netuisget 'NISSING', which unfolded a narrative of time and learning.
Congratulations to Dr. Reeve and Assistant Professor Sutherland on being this year's award recipients!
RECOGNIZING 2024-25 NOMINEES
OCAD U congratulates all faculty members who were nominated and who continue to grow the depth and diversity of high-quality research at the University:
- 2024-25 OCAD U Award for Distinguished Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity: Associate Professor and Chair of Drawing and Painting JJ Lee; Associate Professor Ranee Lee; Associate Professor Ala Roushan; and Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Chair, Digital Futures, Dr. Emma Westecott.
- 2024-25 OCAD U Award for Early-Stage Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity: Assistant Professor Paul Aloisi; Associate Professor and Chair, Illustration, Shea Chang; Assistant Professor Dr. Leah Shenandoah; and Associate Professor Veronika Szkudlarek.
