BIOGRAPHY

Mary Fogarty is a cultural sociologist interested in performance, and she researches dance, music, and popular culture. At York University, she teaches graduate courses such as Advanced Research and Dissertation Seminar and undergraduate courses in dance education.

She is the co-editor of Movies, Moves and Music: The Sonic World of Dance Films (2016), The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies (2022), the first Performance Matters special issue devoted to dance scholarship (2019), and a special issue of Contemporary Music Review on Taylor Swift (2021). Her research also appears in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition (2019), The Routledge Reader on the Sociology of Music (2015), Geographically Isolated and Peripheral Music Scenes (2021), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen (2014), Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity (2012), We Still Here (2020), Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online (2020) and The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock (2021), as well as in various academic journals. For example, her research about the development of Breaking networks internationally appears in Continuum journal.

Dr. Fogarty is currently the President of IASPM-Canada and Editor of IASPM Journal. She is a former Chair of PoP Moves Americas (2016-20).

Professor Fogarty is known internationally for her advocacy of Hip Hop dance education in and outside of formal institutions over many years. She is a member of KeepRockinYou arts collective, founded by Judi Lopez, and the lead lecturer/occasional workshop leader of the Toronto B-Girl Movement. She has recently been appointed as the Welfare Advisor for the Breaking Division of the WDSF, a division set up for Breaking’s appearance in the 2024 Paris Olympics. She has also been appointed as the Equity Officer of the Breaking committee at Canada DanceSport and serves on the Board of Directors for Breaking Canada.  Fogarty is currently co-editing a special issue on Breaking and the Olympics for the Global Hip Hop Studies journal that will appear in 2023 and running an international speaker series devoted to community exchanges and research on Breaking in the Olympic moment with Jason Ng. She regularly organizes other speaker series, conferences, and community events.

She has been an invited Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Hip Hop Education Center (2013-2015 and 2017-2018) and an invited keynote, guest speaker, and guest artist at numerous events.  At York University, she is cross-appointed to Theatre & Performance,  and Communication & Culture graduate degree programs.

A list of her publications is available on her personal website at www.maryfogarty.ca.