News

  • History faculty garner significant federal research funding

    We are delighted to announce that several History Department faculty members have received generous support through the Canadian government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

    Dr. Behnaz Mirzai has received a SSHRC Connection Grant in the amount of $45,336, covering the period 2026-2027, for her project, “Entangled Histories: Slavery and Its Legacies in the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern Worlds.”

    Dr. Colin Rose has been awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant (Stream A) in the amount of $115,096, coverinig the period 2025-2031, for his project, “Mapping Crime and Conflict in Early Modern Italy.”

    Project description: “The grant will support a research program around justice, conflict resolution and civil society as ideas and as practices in early modern Florence and Bologna. These cities represent two different forms of judicial governance and social organization. In each, individuals and communities practiced conflict, negotiation and peacemaking in their own socioeconomic, institutional, and spatial contexts. How did differing political forms shape local conflict resolution practices? How did local understandings of space and place manifest in justice-seeking processes? Investigating the social practices of ordinary and elite conflict resolution in this thickly-archived region will advance our understanding of how communities in the past negotiated a variety of problems and challenges. By doing so, I aim to help people understand modern social conflict through lenses of social trust, civil society and justice.”

    Dr. Mark Spencer and his co-applicant Dr. Marc Hanvelt (Carleton University) are recipients of a SSHRC Insight Grant (Stream B) in the amount of $315,365, covering the period 2025-2031, for their project, “David Hume’s History of England: The Critical Edition and New Methods of Historical Editing.”

    Project description: “David Hume (1711-1776) is widely regarded as one of the leading European philosophers, political thinkers, and historians of the eighteenth century. And yet, there exists no critical edition of his capstone work, The History of England. This SSHRC Insight Grant will support our work to produce one, contracted with Oxford University Press for inclusion in their Clarendon Hume Edition Series. Together with our collaborator (Mikko Tolonen, University of Helsinki), we are developing a new approach to editing a critical edition that blends traditional methods of historical research and text editing with digital tools and techniques that were unavailable to earlier generations of scholars.”

    Congratulations, all!

    Categories: News

  • Renée Girard wins prestigious history journal prize

    The Brock Department of History is delighted to congratulate Dr. Renée Girard for receiving the Canadian Historical Review Best Article Prize for 2025.

    The prize is awarded annually to the author of the article appearing in the CHR who “best demonstrates the finest qualities of advanced historical scholarship: an original and compelling argument that engages and contributes to the historiography, deep research and analysis usually engaging with primary sources, and well-crafted writing.”

    The article, entitled “Un mode par excellence de resurrection des noyés: la fumée du tabac et la persistence des pratiques autochtones dans la France du XVIIIsiècle,” appears in the December 2025 issue of the CHR (vol. 106, no. 4).

    Dr. Girard holds adjunct faculty status in the History Department. She earned her MA in the Department and her Ph.D. at McGill University and has taught several history courses at Brock. Kudos for this well deserved honour!

    From the journal’s editorial board: “In 1748 a physician wrote a pamphlet promoting tobacco enemas as a new way to revive people who had drowned or suffocated and by the mid-nineteenth century it had become a widely accepted method. In this intriguing and surprising article, Girard traces the origins of this medical practice to North American Indigenous ceremonial and diplomatic uses of tobacco. This article is an original and innovative examination of the intersections between western European medicine and Indigenous knowledge. Introduced to Europe by soldiers, the popular use of tobacco enemas demonstrates European fascination with the plant’s supposedly mysterious properties. Cartesian medicine, based in experimentation, distanced medical theories about tobacco’s ability to reanimate from its Indigenous origins, and similarly, historians looking to understand the medicinal use of tobacco through European sources have also erased the connections to Indigenous spiritual and medical practices. Girard’s research demonstrates the complexity of the circulation of knowledge systems in the Atlantic World and the integration of Indigenous epistemologies into European medicine” (CHR vol. 107, no. 2 [June 2026]).

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  • Proud History grads walk the stage in June 2026

    Heartfelt congratulations to all the Brock History students who earned their undergraduate degrees in June 2026. We are so proud of your accomplishments and excited for you as you embark on the next stage in your journeys. It is an honour to have been part of the process. Best wishes to you all!

    Just a few of our graduates appear in the photo above, from left to right: Joey Sanders, Erin Miller, Olivia Hall, and Jack Evans with Dr. Andrew McDonald (second from left). All received their History BAs and B.Eds.

    Categories: News

  • Students share insights gleaned from study-abroad trip to Florence

    Read the full story here: https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2026/06/brock-students-step-into-the-world-of-renaissance-florence/

    Read more about students’ expectations as they prepared for the trip here: https://brocku.ca/humanities/history/2026/05/16/students-head-to-florence-to-discover-history-first-hand/

    Categories: News

  • Students head to Florence to discover history first-hand

    The History Department’s Colin Rose is shepherding a group of students around Florence, Italy, in a new course introducing them first-hand to the social history of the Renaissance.

    The course, MARS/HIST 3F52, is housed in the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and cross-listed by the History Department. Before heading overseas, the students met daily with Dr. Rose to immerse themselves in the city’s past and work with primary sources from the period. Once in Italy, they will learn more about the social, political, and cultural history of Florence and the daily lives of its inhabitants, while also visiting important cultural sites as well as Siena and Bologna.

    Students embarking on the trip bring diverse interests and perspectives to the course. Nick Kester, a History major finishing his fourth year of study, says, “I have wanted to visit Florence since I was 12 years old playing video games set in that city and am so excited to see it with my own eyes.” This won’t be his first hands-on experience: “The History Department and Brock have provided me with several opportunities for experiential learning,” he adds, “and every single one of them have been incredible chances to expand my knowledge base far beyond the classroom.”

    Another enthusiastic participant, Harry Mavromichalis, has just completed his first year as a MARS and Classics & Archaeology major. He points out, “The course presents a really unique opportunity to bring my studies to life and experience the culture and history and see how it has affected modern Italy.”

    Brooke Nolan, a Concurrent Education student majoring in Visual Arts and completing her fourth year at Brock, shares her classmates’ excitement. “I’ve been really interested in the Renaissance since I took a Renaissance art history class, and it focused a lot on Florence,” she reports. “I was really inspired by a lot of the art and how influential it was for its time. I’m excited to see it in person, especially the Ufizzi Gallery and other art institutions, and the architecture as well.”

    Learn more about the Ufizzi Gallery’s holdings here.

    Buon viaggio! We wish you marvelous adventures and lots of learning along the way.

    Categories: News

  • History Department celebrates journal launch, student award winners

    On April 6, we had the great pleasure of celebrating the remarkable achievements of our award-winning History majors along with the stellar students who co-edited and contributed to Volume 11 of The General, our undergraduate History journal.

    Congratulations to these talented scholars for their passionate commitment to making sense of the past and sharing their knowledge with the rest of us.

    You can read the new edition of The General here: https://journals.library.brocku.ca/…/bujh/issue/view/274

    Read the full story about the event here: https://brocku.ca/…/young-historians-make-their-mark…/

    Categories: News

  • Highlights of Brock history research now available online

    On February 18, 2026, nine Brock scholars brought their work into the local community with fast-paced, illuminating talks about their research. The participants included six History MA students (Graeme Anderson, Emma Craib, Gary Gardell, Owen McAllister, Ethan Moncion, and Mitchell Woodward); two Ph.D. students in Interdisciplinary Humanities (Lucas Coia and Elizabeth Colantoni); and a SSHRC-supported postdoctoral fellow in the History Department (Alexandra Macdonald). Well done, all!

    The event was part of an annual history lecture series hosted by the Niagara on the Lake Museum. The Brock session was organized in collaboration with the History Department’s graduate program director, Dr. Jessica Clark.

    The presentations are now available virtually for the public to enjoy, so all are welcome to check them out. The link is here.

    Categories: News

  • Liz Vlossak to offer Swift History course again in Spring 2026

    Dr. Elizabeth Vlossak will offer her course A Swift History for the second time in Spring 2026.

    Read the full Brock News story here.

    Categories: News

  • Behnaz Mirzai’s book named finalist for publishing award

    Dr. Behnaz Mirzai’s book The Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian (University of Toronto Press) has been nominated as a finalist for the Association of American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) in the World History category. Congratulations, Dr. Mirzai!

    Find out more about the book here.

    Learn more about the awards here.

    Categories: News

  • Spring course offerings available

    Register today! Timetables – Registration Guides and Timetables

    Categories: News