Allan Dwyer
Allan Dwyer
Allan Dwyer is a PhD candidate in Memorial’s History Department. “I am researching the early history and socio-economic development of Notre Dame Bay in north-eastern Newfoundland. I am interested in how new communities formed in the 18th century around the rim of the Anglo-Atlantic world. The Atlantic Ocean was not a barrier, it was a highway, and ideas, peoples, staple products, and other things circulated around a busy, connected Atlantic world. At the same time, places like Notre Dame Bay were at the very edge of the known world...it was a borderland that bumped up against an unknown world of new geographies, Aboriginal peoples and shifting legal regimes”.
Allan is from Montreal and has a B.A. in History from McGill as well as an M.A. in Canadian History also from McGill. “My M.A. looked at merchant operations on Fogo Island in the late 18th century and how these merchants contributed to the development of the society there. After my MA, I worked in Japan for a couple of years and then returned to Canada to pursue an MBA in International Finance at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto. After the MBA was completed, I returned to Japan where I worked in the brokerage and investment banking field until 2005, at which time I left Tokyo and returned to Canada to pursue my long-held dream of completing my research on early Newfoundland history. MUN was the best and only option to do this work.”
“I believe the formal structure of a graduate history program is the best way for me to efficiently pursue the complex research that interests me. Under the auspices of a directed research and dissertation program I hope to be able to make an original contribution to our understanding of early Newfoundland history as well as, in a wider sense, gain some insights about how communities formed in new parts of the expanding British Empire. Also, as a PhD candidate I can avail myself of all the experienced researchers and writers in the department and gain from their advice.”
“I chose Memorial because it has the best resources that I required to do my work: First and foremost I can get the expert supervision that I require to negotiate my way through a large amount of research material, archives, and secondary readings. The History Department has a large concentration of experts in such fields as mercantile history, social history, maritime history, Irish history and imperial history...all things that apply to my work. As well, the other resources of the university, mainly the Queen Elizabeth II Library, the important Centre for Newfoundland Studies, and the Maritime History Archive, are vital to my research. I have been amazed by the extensive holdings of the QEII Library. After hundreds of searches, I have not yet been stymied in finding that a required book for my research is not held at the library. This is extremely important for a PhD student, where the different threads of research can run in very diverse and obscure directions.”
“A high concentration of scholars interested and experienced in researching the areas of research that intersect in my project: Imperial history, Newfoundland history, social history, mercantile history. I have also found the supervision to be excellent... a perfect balance of the encouragement of creativity while keeping within the boundaries that academic research demands.”
“Besides excellent research resources like the QEII Library, the Centre for Newfoundland Studies and the Maritime History Archive, the proximity to other archives in the province, such as the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador at The Rooms are definite advantages in pursuing my studies at Memorial.”
“St. John’s is an enjoyable, safe place to live –its convenient to get around, has good public facilities, and a profound interest in the population in their own heritage and history. It’s John's is also a reasonable place to live, in terms of the costs of housing, transportation, etc. And it has a great cultural and social quality of life. My wife is from Japan, and she has made a group of friends here, also from Japan, and she enjoys being part of that little community.”
“My wife and I have a small house in Tilting, Fogo Island. We enjoy driving up to Tilting to visit the friends we have made there, and we are having a lot of fun fixing up the old house and making it our second home in Newfoundland. The wild landscape and fresh air on Fogo Island is addictive. The people are friendly and their material culture and cultural life is in many ways very traditional and unchanged from the earliest years of the area's settlement.”
Allan has presented papers at Graduate History Conferences at York University and Dalhousie University, discussing the importance on the interesting early history of Newfoundland.
“After completing my PhD I plan to spend a year or two doing post-doctoral research at either Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland or at a large American university where I can get additional perspective on the Atlantic world school of history that interests me so much. Thereafter, I hope to gain a teaching/researching position at a university in Atlantic Canada, from where I can continue my research on early Newfoundland history as well as teach the history of the early-modern North Atlantic world to students.”