Trina’s experience converges at the intersection of critical museum scholarship, design, and social activism. A professional graphic designer with a PhD in Cultural Mediations/Museology and an MA in Canadian Studies/Critical Heritage praxis, Trina is both an active museum practitioner and academic. For the past 8 years, she has taught Curatorial Studies at Carleton University, mentoring cohorts of emerging curators.
Her areas of specialization include:
From 2004-2024, Trina worked extensively with Indian residential school Survivors in support of their efforts to educate the public on their experiences and to reclaim and transform the schools themselves. The projects that resulted from this collaborative and decolonizing work involved heritage intervention, museum-making, and capacity-building at the local to national level. Following the completion of her work on the curation and design of the fifth and final gallery of the historic and award-winning Reclaiming Shingwauk Hall project in 2023, Trina led a major immersive storytelling project combining physical scenarization and 3D projection-mapped video designed to redress the erasure of history and the demolition of tangible heritage.
In March 2025, Trina completed art direction and graphic design of Memories are Made in the Kitchen, an Ingenium exhibition opening in July 2025. She is currently working on Objects and Agents/Objects as Evidence, an edited volume featuring the work of student curators on a collection of objects of Canadian industrial design for the domestic home. circa 1940-1990 for Dalhousie Architectural Press.