Committee member bios

Dr. Peggy Shannon (committee co-chair) is an award-winning scholar and artist who has been a professor and administrator at several North American universities for more than 20 years, including the University of California – Davis, Ryerson University and most recently San Diego State University, where she served as Dean of the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts. She became NSCAD University’s president on July 1, 2022.

Dr. Shannon brings to NSCAD her strong belief in preparing students for the creative economy with real-world problem-solving opportunities. She has a proven record of building strong partnerships and collaborations within institutions and their broader communities. Throughout her distinguished career, she has provided exceptional leadership in strategic planning, curricular excellence, teaching excellence, and multinational and interdisciplinary research within the visual and performing arts, humanities and social sciences.

Her proven record of developing and enhancing external partnerships and collaborations creates tremendous value for NSCAD as it embarks on an ambitious journey to unify its campuses at an iconic new location at the historic Halifax Seaport. Dr. Shannon holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in theatre from UC Riverside, a Master of Fine Arts degree in directing from the University of Washington, and a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. She holds dual Canadian – American citizenship.

Committee co-chair Duane Jones’s multi-disciplinary practice involves painting, drawing, digital tools and fashion that is informed by his upbringing as a Black Bermudian cisgender male existing at a crossroads between North American, Caribbean and British culture. His work often explores race, gender, sexual orientation and how his cultural experiences inform or contradict common narratives. Mr. Jones is most known as the founder of Art Pays Me, a lifestyle brand that celebrates artists in the pursuit of financial and creative independence.

Art Pays Me was nominated for Most Innovative Business of the Year by The Halifax Chamber of Commerce in 2021, Duane was named one of the most inspiring immigrants in the Maritimes in 2021 by My East Coast Experience and has been nominated for The Coast’s Best of Halifax Reader’s Choice award twice for fashion design and once for podcasting. He holds an Associate degree in art and design from Bermuda College, a Communication Design (Honours) degree from NSCAD University and a Master of Information Management degree from Dalhousie University. Duane is currently based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia).

Jennifer Archer is the Director of Academic Equity and Quality with the Nova Scotia Community College. She joined NSCC in 2015 and leads a portfolio that oversees academic quality, educational equity, program and curriculum development and program planning and operations. Jennifer previously worked from 1999 – 2014 in Nunavut in the areas of art education and community development, public policy, and training and education focused on working with Inuit leaders to advance Inuitcentred and decolonizing practices, approaches and pedagogies in postsecondary education.

She holds a Master in Adult Education degree from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from NSCAD University. Jennifer is passionate about critical and anticolonial praxis, Indigenous methodologies, advancing equity, diversity and inclusion, and building inclusive and accessible learner pathways.

Dr. Ben Barry (he/him) is Dean and Visiting Associate Professor of Equity and Inclusion at Parsons’ School of Fashion. As a fashion activist, educator, designer and researcher, he is devoted to intervening into fashion systems to systemically shift power and design a future where worldviews and bodies that are currently stigmatized are instead valued and desired. He was previously Chair of the School of Fashion at Ryerson University in Canada where he led the department through a deep transformation by embedding and prioritizing inclusion, decolonization and sustainability in the curriculum and culture.

Ben’s teaching and research centers the intersectional fashion experiences of disabled, fat, trans and queer people and engages them in the design of clothing, fashion media and fashion systems.

He is currently the Principal Investigator of Crippling Masculinity, a research project that explores how disabled, D/deaf and mad-identified men and masculine people navigate the world and make new worlds through fashion. He has published in Fashion Theory, Textile, Gender & Society, Fat Studies, Harvard Business Review, the Business of Fashion and other outlets, and he leads education programs on inclusive fashion practices for global brands and he shares his insights on these topics with international media.