The University of New Brunswick is home to a number of faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students with interest and research expertise on the Atlantic Region, building connections with students and faculty throughout the region at a multitude of other institutions. We are proud to provide a space for research networking, allowing fellow academics and researchers from outside our community to get a glimpse at the important work being done at UNB and throughout Atlantic Canada!
UNB Faculty | Atlantic Canadian History
Dr. Sasha Mullally | Professor | sasham@unb.ca
Sasha Mullally holds a doctorate in history from the University of Toronto, where she studied Canadian and American history with a specialization in the social history of medicine and health. Dr. Mullally teaches a variety of courses and supervises graduate students in the following fields: the history of medicine and health care, Canadian social history, women’s history, the history of the Atlantic region and digital history. She is past President of the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine (2015-17), former co-editor of Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region (2012- 2017), and currently serves as Associate Dean (Undergraduate and Curriculum), for the Faculty of Arts.
UNB Faculty | Department of French
Dr. Chantal Richard | Professor | chantalgrichard@gmail.com
Dr. Richard is a professor in the Department of French at the University of New Brunswick with expertise in Acadian culture, literature, language, and history. She was the invited curator of an exhibit at the Fredericton Region Museum on the Acadians of Pointe Sainte-Anne. Dr. Richard’s interdisciplinary research focuses mainly on Acadian identity past and present, and on cultures in contact in Atlantic Canada as represented in literary and journalistic texts as well as public discourse. She authored a critical edition of Napoléon Landry’s Poèmes acadiens, and co-authored two volumes of the Conventions nationales acadiennes (1881-1890 and 1900-1908). She also created a database of New Brunswick newspapers published in the 1880s, has published 25 articles and book chapters, given 35 papers at academic conferences, and is currently the French-language editor of Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne.
UNB Libraries | Atlantic Canadian Records
Dr. Leah Grandy | UNB Microforms | lgrandy@unb.ca
Leah Grandy is a Microforms Assistant at UNB Libraries, Fredericton and holds a PhD in History. Current areas of interest include colonial naming practices, the Book of Negroes, palaeography, newspapers, and loyalist biography. She works on the “New Brunswick Loyalist Journeys” project and edits and writes for the blog Atlantic Loyalist Connections.
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Christine Jack |UNB Microforms | cjack@unb.ca
Christine is the manager of UNB Microform collections. She actively contributes to the Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog, and works on the New Brunswick Loyalist Journeys project.
UNB Graduate Students | Atlantic Canadian History
Emma Doucete | MA Student | edoucette.4@unb.ca
Emma is a Master’s of Arts in History student at UNB who hails from Johnston’s River, Prince Edward Island. Prior to coming to UNB, she graduated the Tourism and Travel Management program at Holland College and received her Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History with a Minor in Business from the University of Prince Edward Island. Her research interests consist of Atlantic Canadian social history, the history of medicine, women’s history, immigration history and oral history. In the past Emma has worked with the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation, the Saint Dunstan’s Memories Project, and the Lucy Maud Montgomery Institute. Her MA report, “The Midwife Next Door: The History of Midwifery on Prince Edward Island 1900-1950”, is the first piece of academic writing that tells the stories of PEI midwives.
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Ian Baird | PhD Student
Ian Baird [BComm, MBA (Dal); MA (UNB)], is in the third year of his doctoral studies at UNB (Canadian History) under the supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Mancke, CRC. His research lies within the ‘war and society’ domain, temporally in the years before, during and after the Great War of 1914 to 1918. Specifically, Ian considers the subject of death during the war, and the complex ways that Canadians coped with the threat of death, death itself, and bereavement, at the battlefront and home front. By approaching the subject from a spiritual perspective, Ian’s research reveals the plethora of heterodox beliefs and rituals that evolved both within and without mainline Christianity, the historical origins and resilience of these practices, their 20th century continuities, and relevance within Canada’s modern armed force communities.
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Sean Cox | PhD Student | scox@unb.ca
Sean is an international graduate student in the University of New Brunswick’s Department of History. Raised in the United States on the coast of Maine, he developed an academic focus on the transborder Northeast of Atlantic Canada and New England while earning a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Maine in Orono in 2015 and 2020 respectively. Beginning his professional career as a Park Ranger at Acadia National Park, Sean’s research in environmental and tourism history has been heavily influenced by living and working in Maine’s “Vacationland.” Sean is also a classic car enthusiast and hobbyist mechanic, leading to an incorporated focus on early 20th century technological modernity in mobility and infrastructure for rural landscapes.
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Charles Ferris | PhD Student | charlesferris@unb.ca
Charles Ferris has extensive experience in the field of human and civil rights. After graduation from the University of New Brunswick with degrees in History (B.A.(Hons.), M.A.) and Law (L.L.B.), he served as legal counsel to the New Brunswick Ombuds Office and the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission. As legal counsel, Ferris represented the Commission on several human rights tribunal and judicial matters, including those which incorporated Gay Pride Week into Fredericton’s Civic life, and that which permanently excluded a prolific anti-Semitic author from his public-school teaching position. Ferris is an active Church and community volunteer and presently serves as a N.B. Provincial Judicial Appointment Review Adviser and a member of the N.B. Human Rights Commission. He is a member of a heritage preservation group, The Friends of the Penniac Baptist Church & Cemetery Inc., as well as the York-Sunbury Historical Society. His PhD thesis research is a comparative biography of two Maritime Canadian public figures – Douglas Hazen and Lucy Maud Montgomery – who achieved prominence during the opening decades of the Twentieth Century, via Progressive movements and The Great War. The tool of comparative biography aspires to create a structure that allows and supports a defensible new insight into the nature and development of that movement which we call Canadian imperial nationalism.
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John Matchim | PhD Student | john.matchim@unb.ca
John is a PhD student in the University of New Brunswick’s Department of History. His dissertation research focuses on rural-remote health care in Labrador and northern Newfoundland after 1949, and the hospital ship services provided by the International Grenfell Association between 1965 and 1975. John earned a master of arts from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and worked for Memorial’s Faculty of Medicine as a CIHR-funded research assistant examining rural health care provision in pre-Confederation Newfoundland.
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Graham Nickerson | Masters Student | gnicker@highlandgeo.com
Enrolled in a Masters of Arts in History, Graham Nickerson’s focus is digital mapping of public history with an emphasis on Black history in the Maritimes and the American Northeast. Graham is involved with several Black history organizations helping to preserve and present Black history to the public in both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. As a Black Loyalist descendant, Graham is working to expand the historiography of Black Loyalist immigration to the Maritime Provinces, their internal migration over time, and then the great out migration in the decades following the American Civil War.
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Susan Parker | PhD Student | sparker202@gmail.com
Susan is a graduate student at the University of New Brunswick from Pictou, Nova Scotia. She graduated from Mount Allison University in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts, honours in Canadian Studies and a major in History. Her honours thesis focused on French Immersion education in Canada with a case study on Northern Nova Scotia. In 2018, she graduated from Saint Mary’s University with a Master of Arts degree in Atlantic Canada Studies and a thesis exploring the origins of industrial heritage tourism in Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia Museum of Industry. Her research interests include tourism, heritage, and industry in the Maritimes, particularly in rural communities.
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Stefanie Slaunwhite |PhD Student | stefanie.slaunwhite@unb.ca
Stefanie has had a lifelong fascination with all things historical. From a young age, she and her parents ventured to museums across the Maritimes. Upon entering university, she knew she wanted to study history. She completed her Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Atlantic Canada Studies and her Master of Arts in Atlantic Canada Studies, both at Saint Mary’s University. Her Master’s thesis, entitled “The Intricacies of Integration: The Case of Graham Creighton High School” won the Governor General’s Gold Medal for Academic Excellence at convocation. Stefanie is continuing her study of integration policies at the Ph.D. level at the University of New Brunswick. Her dissertation will examine the Dr. W.F. Roberts Hospital School located in Saint John, New Brunswick, an institution for students with disabilities. Her fascination with the both the Atlantic region and interdisciplinary studies continues to shape her scholastic identity.
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Katelyn Stieva | PhD Student | katelyn.stieva@unb.ca
Katelyn is a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick in the Department of History. Her broad research focuses on questions surrounding the complex and complicated relationships and legacies that exist between racialized communities and security forces in the long twentieth century. Katelyn’s doctoral research builds upon her Masters’ research which traced the wartime experiences of James and Arthur Eatman, a father and son pair from Fredericton who served in the First and Second World War, respectively. This SSHRC-funded research aims to identifies and traces the wartime trajectories of Black combat soldiers serving with Atlantic Canadian units during the two world wars and compares and contrasts the wartime experiences of these soldiers to broader social, cultural and political trends.
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Leanna Thomas | PhD Student | leanna.thomas@unb.ca
Leanna is a doctoral student at the University of New Brunswick. Prior to coming to UNB, she studied History and French Language at the University of Central Florida. Her MA thesis in History examined changes in the construct of Acadian identity due to their dispersal and their experiences after arriving in colonial Louisiana. Through her studies she published articles with Louisiana History entitled “A Fractured Foundation: Discontinuities in Acadian Resettlement in Louisiana, 1755-1803” and with the North American Society of Seventeenth Century French Literature entitled “The Development and Influence of Acadia’s La Petite Cendrillouse: A Journey across the Atlantic and into Acadian Literature.” She is now exploring the role of twentieth-century literature in contributing to the creation of new historical narratives for marginalized Francophone communities in Atlantic Canada and the French Caribbean.
Université de Moncton | Acadian Studies
Dr. Greg Kennedy | Department of History | gregorykennedy@umoncton.ca
Gregory Kennedy is Associate Professor of History and Research Director of the Acadian Studies Institute at the Université de Moncton. Kennedy’s first book, Something of a Peasant Paradise? Comparing Rural Societies in Acadie and the Loudunais, 1604-1755 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), won the Canadian Historical Association Clio Prize for the best new scholarly book on the history of Atlantic Canada.
Crandall University | Department of History
Dr. Keith Grant |Department of History |keithsgrant@cradalluniveristy.ca
Keith Grant (PhD, University of New Brunswick) is an Assistant Professor of History at Crandall University in Moncton, New Brunswick, teaching courses on early North American and religious history. His current research explores how people in the Maritimes provinces participated in transatlantic debates and communities during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a focus on book history and the history of emotions. His current book manuscript is Enthusiasms and Loyalties: Emotions, Religion, and Politics in British North America. He is collaborating with Daniel Samson on the digital project, The Colonial Bookshelf: Tracking the Reading of Colonial Nova Scotians, and is a founding co-editor of Borealia, a collaborative academic blog on early Canadian history. He can also be reached on Twitter at @KeithSGrant.
St. Francis Xavier University | Department of History
Dr. Barry MacKenzie | Department of History | bmackenz@stfx.ca
Barry MacKenzie teaches Canadian history at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish. His recently completed PhD dissertation (UNB, 2019) focused on representations of Britishness, women, Indigenous peoples, and the military during Royal Tours of New Brunswick between 1901 and 1959, as well as ways in which local issues impacted these major public events. One element of this project was featured in a Feb 2020 Acadiensis blog post (https://acadiensis.wordpress.com/2020/02/03/breaking-royal-precedent-the-escuminac-disaster-and-the-royal-tour-of-1959/). Current research projects include a biography of Major J. Archie MacNaughton (based on a voluminous series of letters written during his service in the First and Second World Wars) as well as an illustrated history of St FX University. He teaches broadly in Canadian history, but takes particular pleasure in the teaching of the histories of the Maritime Provinces, immigration, the Canadian monarchy, and memory and commemoration. He is also active in the field of public history in Antigonish, including as a board member of the local Heritage Association. He was the curator of “A Hearty Welcome: Royal Tours of New Brunswick, 1786-2012” at the Fredericton Region Museum, and “Lebanese Pioneers of New Brunswick” at King’s Landing Historical Settlement.
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Researchers, archivists, graduate students, and independent scholars that wish to be added to this list should contact Richard Yeomans, ADS Website Manager, at richard.yeomans@unb.ca | A maximum 250 word description of how your research relates to Atlantic Canada Studies, links to any digital content you would like included, and contact information can be part of your entry on the network.