Sajdeep Soomal

Sajdeep Soomal is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He is currently writing about the history and philosophy of geochemistry for his dissertation project, The Chemicalization of Substance, which looks at the critical role that colonial chemical knowledge infrastructures played in the making of Canada as a large-scale industrial petrol, mining and agricultural state in the 19th century. Sajdeep works on related curatorial projects about the politics of chemical visualization with artists who are re-imagining, playing with and altering our synthetic surround. He serves as the Chairperson of the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC), a collective member of Sanghum Film, and as a programming committee member of InterAccess. He has previously conducted research projects for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC), and the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA). From 2015-2016, he held the Archie Malloch Fellowship in Public Learning at the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI) at McGill University. He holds a BA in History from McGill University and an MA in History from the University of Toronto.