Melissa J. Nelson is an archivist, educator, and community connector based in Toronto, Canada.  

Her work centres Black being and belonging in the Archives to support collective healing and liberation movements. She is guided by critical and creative praxis to reimagine the Archives as sites of Black joy. In 2023, Melissa was the recipient of the Association of Canadian Archivists’ New Professional Award and Ancestry Award. 

Currently, Melissa is building a grassroots Black Activist Archive and Alternative School in partnership with Wildseed Centre for Art + Activism – home of Black Lives Matter Canada. This project will be an incubator for seeding imagination for liberatory creativity, organizing social justice movements, empowering generations of memory activists, and supporting the continuity of community-based archival work. They believe in the power of imagination for architecting new worlds for Afroinfinities – boundless possibilities for Black life.

Melissa works simultaneously at the community and institutional levels to transform how we understand, preserve, and activate collective memory. She has a consulting practice spanning across notable clients such as Harvard University, ARMA International, Library and Archives Canada, Association of Canadian Archivists, among others. 

Melissa is the Founder and Creative Director of the Black Memory Collective. She is also the Creator and Host of the podcast, Archives & Things. Melissa holds a Master of Information Studies from McGill University. She received a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in History, with a minor in Sociology, from Carleton University.