Trina Cooper-Bolam

Trina Cooper-Bolam is an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University and a Banting Postdoctoral Researcher working with Concordia University’s Curating and Public Scholarship Lab (CaPSUL). Cooper-Bolam earned a PhD in Cultural Mediations (2020) and an MA in Canadian Studies (2014) from Carleton University. Previously, Cooper-Bolam held senior positions at the Aboriginal Healing and Legacy of Hope Foundations–organizations working to transform the legacy of residential schools. Equally an academic researcher and an exhibition curator/designer, Cooper-Bolam is an ongoing contributor to the Survivor-led Reclaiming Shingwauk Hall exhibition at Algoma University.

A settler/first generation Canadian living and working on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe territory in Ottawa, Cooper-Bolam recognizes her implicatedness in historical continuities of settler-colonial violence, which she works to disrupt through acts of decolonial allyship. Her research focuses on ‘the museum as method’ and uncovers approaches, methods, and pedagogies for augmenting the affective force of history in the present, particularly in the context of difficult knowledge and marginalized and erased histories. Interpreting the constructs ‘museum’ and ‘exhibition’ liberally, Cooper-Bolam works to manifest hidden and erased histories and materialities. In examining, experimenting with, and applying collaborative transdisciplinary performative (research-led) methods of exhibitionary inquiry, her research contributes to a growing body of literature on exhibition as a research method.

Her current project, in collaboration with Erica Lehrer, is one of combined research-creation and critical pedagogy entitled Decolonial Methods: Mobilizing the Archive / Remediating Traumatic Space. A transdisciplinary Indigenous/settler research collaboration, this project is part of a research trajectory that responds to the priorities of Indigenous storytellers and engages students from Concordia and Carleton Universities in building and supporting Indigenous-driven, technologically enhanced, in situ interpretation, memorialization, and Indigenous place-(re)making.

Forthcoming Publications

• Cooper-Bolam, Trina and Monica Patterson Eds. Objects as Agents/Objects as Evidence: Evidence/Agents: Curated Encounters with Domestic Objects. Canadian Modern Series, Dalhousie Architectural Press.
• Cooper-Bolam, Trina and Peter Hodgson. “The Museal Spectacle in Remediative Repair.” Difficult Heritage in an Age of Crises: A Guide to New Approaches for Sustainability, Community, and Engagement. Exhibiting Theory. Vol. 2. Jagiellonian University Press.
• Cooper-Bolam, Trina. “Difficult knowledge as bequest: Implementing the “Terrible Gift” in exhibition.” Museums and Mass Violence. Routledge.

Recent Publications

• Cooper-Bolam, Trina. “Mnemonic Fakery and Other Interpretive Strategies.” Public (2021).
• Cooper-Bolam, Trina. “Workhouses and residential schools: From institutional models to
• ” Cybercartography in a Reconciliation Community. Modern Cartography Series. Vol. 8. Academic Press, 2020. 143-166.
• Cooper-Bolam, Trina. “On the Call for a Residential Schools National Monument.” Journal of Canadian Studies 1 (2018): 57-81.