Media & Design Innovation PhD program to graduate its inaugural cohort
The Media and Design Innovation (MDI) PhD program at The Creative School is celebrating a major milestone with the graduation of its first cohort in 2026. Designed for creative professionals who explore research through practice, the program cultivates innovation across media, design, and emerging technologies.
“MDI challenges students to rethink creative practice not merely as a way to illustrate or translate research, but as a form of research in its own right,” says Dr. John Shiga, Graduate Program Director, MDI PhD. “Our inaugural cohort has approached this challenge with great enthusiasm, creativity, and intellectual rigour.”
Creative practitioners shaping the future of media and design
Graduating students Justine Woods, Paola Poletto, David McFarlane, Andrew Lochhead, Daniella Kalinda, Stuart Duncan, Finlay Braithwaite, and Jorge Ayala represent a diverse group of scholar-practitioners whose work bridges creativity, critical thinking, and experimentation.
Transformational Museum Experiences by Paola Poletto
Paola Poletto’s research draws on her experience as both a museum professional and an artist to explore how self-reflection can strengthen ethical and innovative practices within the museum field.
Pursuing the MDI PhD program part-time, Poletto continues to investigate how museums can meaningfully deliver on their promise of transformational experiences.
"Through my dual career as a museum professional and artist, I bridge self-reflection with the museum field’s ubiquitous promise for transformational experience.”
The Lake Shift: Imagining Musical Collaboration with the Great Lakes by David McFarlane
David McFarlane’s multidisciplinary research-creation project explores interspecies collaboration by treating the Great Lakes as creative partners. After starting the program, the project changed from imagining ways to personify the lakes to exploring ways to collaborate with them.
McFarlane emphasizes that MDI provided a unique environment, consisting of faculty resources, in which the theoretical, ethical, creative and technological aspects of his research project were all strongly supported and could thrive.
“This project began a long time ago...I had imagined a story in which the Great Lakes were the main characters. I wondered what they might say to each other and to us.”
Walking Dundas Street: Monumentality, Public History, and Spatial Practice on (maybe) Canada’s “Longest Street” by Andrew Lochhead
Andrew Lochhead’s research investigates the relationship between creative practice, memory, and public space through a critically engaged walking methodology that helps people make meaningful connections between the past and the present.
To Lochhead, this work is especially relevant as governments, institutions, and individuals in Canada endeavour to address their roles in ongoing colonial violence, and to imagine futures based on justice. MDI provided substantial resources and opportunities to develop his creative approach to research and share it on a global scale.
"MDI offered dedicated space and time to reflect on the role of creative practices in interpreting, imagining, and enacting new relationships between people and the world."
Small Newsrooms, Big Changes: Exploring the Effects of Generative AI by Stuart Duncan
Stuart Duncan applied the program’s interdisciplinary approach to his background in journalism by examining how generative AI is transforming the news industry and shaping the future of digital journalism.
For Duncan, working in a busy newsroom rarely allowed the time to slow down and think about the long-term impacts of digital technologies, which he got to explore through his research.
"My time in the MDI program allowed me to further explore issues I encountered in my former professional life in digital journalism... how generative AI is affecting news."
A community of creative inquiry
Other members of the inaugural cohort—Daniella Kalinda, Finlay Braithwaite, Jorge Ayala, and Justine Woods—brought forward innovative projects spanning storytelling, fashion, culture, and digital design. Together, the group embodies the program’s vision of creativity as research and collaboration as discovery.
The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University
The Creative School is a dynamic faculty that is making a difference in new, unexplored ways. Made up of Canada’s top professional schools and transdisciplinary hubs in media, communication, design and cultural industries, The Creative School offers students an unparalleled global experience in the heart of downtown Toronto.