Prospective students:
If you would like to do graduate research on the environmental history of water, or some other important problem in transnational environmental history or the environmental history or historical geography of Canada, please send me an email.
Current students:
Peter de Montmollin is in the first year of his MA. Following over a decade working as a journalist in Uruguay and Chile, Peter is investigating the environmental history of hydro-electric systems in twentieth century Chile.
James Rhatigan is an PhD student in historical geography, who completed his MA at UBC Geography in 2016. He has completed his comprehensive exams and is working on a thesis dealing with the historical development of nuclear power in Ontario. His work has been supported by a four year fellowship and a J. Lewis Robinson scholarship in Geography.
Mark Stoller is pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD program focusing on environmental impact assessments and territoriality in the Northwest Territories. I am co-supervising his work with Michael Byers. Mark’s work is supported by a SSHRC doctoral fellowship.
Former Students:
Laurie Dickmeyer completed an MA in 2009 focusing on the contemporary environmental history of wildlife conservation in the context of the Banff-Bow Valley Report (1996). Her work was supported by the Canadian water history project, which she served as a research assistant. After teaching English for two years in Taiwan and working on her own command of Mandarin, she pursued a PhD at the University of California, Irvine, examining aspects of US and Chinese trade and and diplomatic history, drawing on both English language and Chinese sources. She is currently Assistant Professor in History at Angelo State University in Texas.
Lisa Dumoulin completed her MA in 2014 with a thesis which examined the place of children in the course of large dam development debates, with special reference to the Site C proposal on the Peace River in northern British Columbia. Her work was supported by a SSHRC MA fellowship. She is now an Education Program Coordinator with the Sierra Club of British Columbia.
Alan Grove, who I co-supervised with Merje Kuus, completed an MA thesis in 2017 on the geographies of Arctic shipping. His work was supported by a grant from the Government of Canada Doctoral Student Research Award program awarded through the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Jonathan Luedee defended his PhD thesis in early September, 2018 on the environmental history of the Porcupine Caribou herd across borders in the Yukon and Alaska. He has published several book reviews and book chapters, including a study of local fisheries conflicts in Newfoundland based on earlier MA research in the collection, Land and Sea: Environmental History in Atlantic Canada. His work was supported by a SSHRC doctoral fellowship. He also received the James Bourque Northern Doctoral Scholarship from the Royal Geographical Society of Canada in 2014. He currently holds a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences at the University of Winnipeg.
Emma Norman is currently Chair of the Native Environmental Science Department at Northwest Indian College, Washington State. She completed a PhD in 2009 under my co-supervision with Karen Bakker. She defended her thesis in 2009, entitled, “Navigating Bordered Geographies: Water Governance Along the Canada-United States Border.” Emma’s work was supported by numerous grants and scholarships from UBC, Foreign Affairs and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation. Her book, Governing Transboundary Waters (Routledge, 2015) received the 2015 Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award from the Political Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.
Jonathan Peyton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of Manitoba. He completed his PhD thesis in 2011 on the environmental and historical geography of the Stikine River in northern British Columbia, exploring aspects of place-making and marginality. Peyton’s research was supported by a SSHRC doctoral fellowship. Currently preparing a book manuscript based on his PhD thesis, he has also published a string of papers on resource geographies, political ecology and northern Canada.
Student Committees on which I serve or have served:
PhD Geography, UBC:
Rosemary Collard (completed; currently Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University)
Matthew Dyce (completed; currently Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Winnipeg)
Maija Heimo (completed)
Arn Keeling (completed; currently Associate Professor, Geography, Memorial University)
Etienne Rivard (completed; currently professor adjoint, Université St. Boniface)
Joanna Reid (completed)
Matthew Schnurr (completed; currently Associate Professor, International Development Studies, Dalhousie University)
Howard Stewart (completed; currently international development consultant)
Shannon Stunden Bower (completed, Assistant Professor, History, U of Alberta)
John Thistle (completed)
Robert Wilson (completed; currently Associate Professor, Geography, Syracuse University)
MA Geography, UBC:
Emily Davis (completed; currently faculty research associate, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon)
Rebecca Smith (completed; currently administrative staff, UBC)
Vanessa Sparrow (completed)
Other:
Brandon Davis, PhD, History, UBC (completed)