Hi! I’m Annalissa

I’m a mixed-race Afro-Indo-Guyanese and Filipina creative educator, artist, community consultant, and (re)searcher whose work braids together the arts, critical literacy, and radical healing. With over 12 years of experience in community education and engagement, I turn to creativity as a critical self-discovery, relational and transformative learning, and the (re)imagining of more just and liberatory futures.

I currently teach in the Bachelor of Social and Community Development program at Sheridan College, where I lead courses in Community Arts-Based Research & Advocacy, Social Movements & Social Change, and Sociological Perspectives in Community Development.

I’m also a doctoral student in Adult Education and Community Development at the University of Toronto. My doctoral research broadly explores pedagogies of radical healing and imagination for social justice in community learning spaces—particularly those that exist beyond institutional and neoliberal structures, or emerge within them as fugitive spaces.

Rooted in ancestral re/membering, collective care and “soul work”, my praxis is committed to co-creating spaces where learning is embodied, artful, imaginal, and deeply (inter)connected to the worlds we carry and the ones we are creating.

I’ve worked with a wide range of organizations and/or groups across sectors and fields including, but not limited to: