[2][3] Thompson completed a PhD in communication studies at McGill University under the supervision of Charmaine Nelson and Will Straw.
[5][6] It examined the relationship of Black women's hair with Canadian immigration, politics, and societal norms.
She is currently pursuing a research project "Newspapers, Minstrelsy and Black Performance at the Theatre: Mapping the Spaces of Nation-Building in Toronto, 1870s to 1930s" as part of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2019–21).
[9] Prior to her appointment at the school she was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow from 2016 to 2018 with the Centre for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies and the University of Toronto and the Department of English and Drama at the University of Toronto Mississauga .
[4][10] Thompson's second book Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Race, which used Uncle Tom as backdrop for understanding the production of racial tropes, is set to be published 2021 by Coach House Books.