Research Areas
Tim Stapleton works on the history of war and society in Africa, particularly Southern Africa.
Faculty Members
The Canadian history faculty offer particular strength in military history, western Canadian history and social, cultural, and intellectual history; they also have expertise in legal and gender history, as well as the history of energy. David Bercuson analyze such issues as war and its impact on society, the armed forces’ institutions and traditions, and Canada’s involvement in twentieth-century wars. Lyndsay Campbell's expertise is in legal history, particularly comparative Canadian and American approaches to law in the 19th century. Paul Chastko is a specialist on the oil and gas industry’s history in western Canada. George Colpitts studies environmental history, commodity exchange, Native history and the North. Warren Elofson writes about the West’s environmental history and its ranching frontier. Nancy Janovicek specializes in social movements and gender politics. David Marshall examines 19th- and 20th- century religious history and popular culture. Paul Stortz focuses on the history of education, academic cultures, and ethnicity in the 20th century.
Faculty Members
David Wright is the department's East Asianist. His research interests include Chinese military and diplomatic history, the Mongol conquest of China and the Mongol world empire, and 19th- and 20th-century North American journalists and missionaries in China.
Faculty Members
History faculty cover the full range of European history from its medieval foundations to the contemporary era. Their approaches to the past include social, political, military, religious, cultural, legal, intellectual, and gender history. Four faculty members are trained in British history (Warren Elofson, John Ferris, Ken MacMillan and Glenn Wilkinson); two work on German history (Frank Stahnisch and Annette Timm). Alexander Hill specializes in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union. The Europeanists supervise graduate students on topics closely related to their current research: lay piety, family and labour; the Reformation and wars of religion; England/Britain and its empire; nationalism; the First and Second World Wars (and military, diplomatic and intelligence history more generally); fascism and Nazism; and the history of medicine.
Faculty Members
Department members focus on 19th- and 20th-century Latin America. Amelia Kiddle works on Mexico’s political and cultural history, with special emphasis on the country’s relations with the rest of Latin America and its oil industry. Hendrik Kraay focuses on 19th-century Brazil and has worked on independence, slavery, race, civic rituals, and military history. Graduate students in Latin American history also benefit from the Latin American Research Centre and the many experts on Latin America associated with it.
Faculty Members
The U.S. history faculty offer particular strengths in the fields of social, legal, political and transnational history. Lyndsay Campbell's expertise is in legal history, particularly comparative Canadian and American approaches to law in the 19th century. Ken MacMillan has written extensively about seventeenth-century settlement and policy. Jewel Spangler has specialized in religion and society in the South and is currently studying the cultural history of disaster and its remembrance in the 19th century. Politics and cities in the Civil War era are Frank Towers’ main areas of research; he is currently examining how proslavery politicians mobilized voters.
Faculty Members
George Colpitts studies commodity exchange (particularly the fur trade), Native history and the North. Paul Stortz is interested in immigration and ethnicity in Canada.
Faculty Members
The methods and approaches of cultural history inform the work of many department members who work on Canadian, European, U.S., and Latin American history.
Faculty Members
The history of energy and environmental history are important areas of expertise in the department. George Colpitts writes about environmental change and conservation in western and northern Canada. Paul Chastko is an expert on the North American petroleum industry. Amelia Kiddle is studying the international repercussions of Mexico’s oil industry nationalization in 1938. Petra Dolata’s research focuses on European and North American energy history after 1945.
Faculty Members
Three department members specialize in the history of gender and sexuality. Annette Timm has written extensively about twentieth-century German and European gender and sexuality, while Nancy Janovicek researches feminist organizing in Canada. Elizabeth Jameson writes about women and gender in western North America.
Faculty Members
British and North American legal history is an area of strength in the department. Lyndsay Campbell works on comparative North American legal history, while Ken MacMillan's expertise is in British and early modern European imperial legal history.
Faculty Members
Frank Stahnisch’s interests include the development of experimental physiology and laboratory medicine since the eighteenth century, as well as the historical relationship between the neurosciences and the philosophy of the mind.
Faculty Members
The Department of History has one of the strongest concentrations of military and diplomatic historians, not only in Canada, but in the English-speaking world. David Bercuson work on Canadian military history, particularly Canada’s involvement in the First and Second World Wars. John Ferris is an authority on the military and diplomatic history of Britain and a leader in the emerging field of intelligence history. Alexander Hill works on twentieth-century Soviet military history. Hendrik Kraay has written on nineteenth-century Brazilian armed forces, while David Wright works on Chinese and East-Asian military history. Paul Chastko examines the oil industry’s globalization. Timothy Stapleton works on the history of war and society in Africa, particularly Southern Africa. The department offers MA and PhD supervision in a range of national military and diplomatic histories as well as joint supervision of international and comparative topics. Graduate students benefit from close collaboration with the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies.
Faculty Members
Political history is an area of strength in the department. Department members study the history of politics, political movements, and political ideas in many different contexts.
Faculty Members
Several department members specialize in the history of religion. David Marshall examines 19th- and 20th- century Canadian religious history while Jewel Spangler has written about the religious history of the U.S. South.
Faculty Members
The methods of social history inform the scholarship of many department members who work on Canadian, U.S., European and Latin American history.
Faculty Members