LLC Appoints Dr. Shorto As Executive Director
Dr. Sylvia Shorto has replaced Dr. Janet Ferguson as Executive Director of the Lifelong Learning Centre [LLC] at Bermuda College, following Dr. Ferguson resigning after nearly a decade at the LLC.
A spokesperson said, “Dr. Sylvia Shorto has replaced Dr. Janet Ferguson as Executive Director of the Lifelong Learning Centre [LLC] at Bermuda College. Dr. Ferguson resigned after almost a decade’s service at the LLC in order to pursue professional opportunities elsewhere.
“Dr. Shorto, a Bermudian historian of art and architecture, comes to the LLC with a most impressive academic and professional background. She earned her B.A. Hons. degree at the University of Toronto and her M.A. and Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
“She also earned a post-doctoral Curatorial Studies Certificate from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
“Dr. Shorto’s academic work explores hybrid material culture across different scales in a variety of colonial and postcolonial contexts, including North India.
“She has long been a champion of vernacular architecture and furniture and of the unknown craftsmen who made it. In her work, she looks for ways to validate the local as bearer of identity.
“Dr Shorto worked at the Brooklyn Museum on the exhibition catalogue, Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America.
“Her other publications include British Houses in Late Mughal Delhi [Boydell and Brewer, 2018]; ‘A Tomb of One’s Own: Governor’s House, Lahore,’ in Vikramāditya Prakāsh and Peter Scriver, eds., Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon [London: Routledge Architext Series, 2007]; and ‘Building for the Business of Bermuda’, Traditional Buildings and Settlements Review [vol. xvii, #ii, Spring 2006].
“During her teaching career, most recently in the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, Dr Shorto’s involvement in outreach programmes taught her the importance of peer learning, community building and intergenerational connection to help create inclusive and participatory membership.
“Working with others at the LLC, she hopes to build on this background and cement relationships through shared new experiences in areas of mutual interest.”
“It would be a challenge for anyone to try and fill the shoes of Dr Janet Fergusson, who has carefully constructed a framework at the Center through which learning can be truly transformative”, said Dr Shorto.
“It will be a privilege for me to go on with this work, and to contribute to the continuing – and I would hope endless – growth of the participants in the Centre’s programmes.”
LLC President Mr. Robert Horton said, “We express profound gratitude to Dr. Ferguson for her commitment to the LLC, for her sterling, truly outstanding, service and wish her Godspeed as she explores new opportunities elsewhere.
“We know that she will continue to attain the standard of excellence in all her endeavours, personal and professional. In addition, we are confident that the LLC will continue to thrive with the enormously accomplished Dr. Shorto at the helm.”
