Irish Research Council Spotlight on Research: Cheryl L’Hirondelle

The prestigious Canadian Governor General’s Award for Artistic Achievement in Media and Visual Arts, was this year granted to IRC Enterprise Partnership Scheme Postgraduate, Cheryl L’Hirondelle. Honoured in recognition of her exceptional career both as a singer/songwriter, community-engaged artist and arts activist and her remarkable contribution as an Indigenous interdisciplinary artist, L’Hirondelle is a self-described ‘swift-flying songbird, interdisciplinary artist, PhD candidate and so much more, originally from the land now known as Canada. She holds an IRC EPS award for her PhD research, with Kíla, the Irish world music-group and record label as her enterprise partner and SMARTlab, Inclusive Design Research Centre of Ireland at UCD as her research base.

In her own words, Cheryl L’Hirondelle is an award-winning and community-engaged Indigenous (Cree/Halfbreed; German/Polish) multi- and interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter, curator and critical writer whose creative practice investigates the dynamism of nêhiyawak cosmology in a contemporary time-place continuum. Her Masters of Inclusive Design (IDRC/OCAD University, Toronto) introduced and expounded on Indigenous concepts of radical inclusivity and sonic survivance and is further expanding these theories in inclusive practice at SMARTlab as part of her PhD, which is in its final year.

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