Dr. Hyacinth Simpson

Biography

Hyacinth M. Simpson is an Associate Professor and the Dimensions Faculty Chair in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her scholarly research and creative activities focus on Caribbean, Black, and Decolonial studies. She launched her work at TMU in 2005 by organizing the SSHRC-funded international conference 'Caribbean Migrations: Negotiating Borders', and served as the Editor of the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Association of Caribbean Women Writers & Scholars, where she received the Horizon Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals in 2010. Dr. Simpson has guest-edited special issues for scholarly journals and her research has significantly contributed to topics such as Caribbean oralities, the history and poetics of Caribbean short stories in English, and the burgeoning Caribbean film industry. In addition to her literary research, she is the Principal Investigator of a multi-tiered SRC social history project titled 'Black Canada and the Great War', which includes a SSHRC-funded Symposium. An advocate for community engagement, she emphasizes public-facing methods to disseminate SRC results that aim to reshape public perceptions of Black Caribbean lives and histories. Dr. Simpson has taught in several graduate programs, including Literatures of Modernity (LitMod) and Immigration Settlement Studies (ISS), and her graduate students have published in esteemed journals.

Research Interests