Deanna Yerichuk
Areas of Expertise
- Community Music
- Equity and Inclusion in Music Learning
Biography
I have dedicated my academic and musical career to community-engaged social change. As an academic, my research focuses on equity and inclusion in and through music. I have a Master of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, and I earned my PhD from the University of Toronto in Music Education in 2015.
I joined the Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2017 as assistant professor, where I now serve as coordinator of the Bachelor of Music: Community Music program. I teach undergraduate courses in singing, facilitation and leadership, music cultures, and foundations in community music. At the graduate level, I teach interdisciplinary arts and arts-informed research methods.
As a performer, my singing career has run the gamut of musicals, classical repertoire, folk music, vocal improv and world music. As a community musician, I have led the Voice and Choral department at Dixon Hall Music School (Toronto) for five years, and I was a frequent guest conductor for Echo Women’s Choir (Toronto). I also worked with Sing for Life (Edmonton) to pilot music classes for mothers in conflict with the law so that they can learn action songs, games, and lullabies to sing with their children.
My research focuses on the intersection of music, community engagement, and social change. My doctoral research focused on the emergence of Canada’s first community music schools in Toronto’s immigrant neighbourhoods in the early 1900s. I was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting researcher at the University of Alberta for the 2016/17 year, where I studied the impacts of colonization in Alberta’s Indigenous communities to inform provincial policy.
My research currently focuses on questions of equity and inclusion in music. I am currently working on an arts-based participatory action research project in partnership with the Waterloo Region District School Board. The project centres around the voices of African, Caribbean, and Black identifying students to examine how participatory music affects high school climates from a racial justice lens. This project is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.