In recent years, Rhea Rollmann has emerged as one of Newfoundland and Labrador’s most powerful voices for justice, visibility and community memory.

As a writer, journalist, audio producer, activist and scholar, she uses storytelling to both illuminate forgotten histories and to demand accountability, equity and a richer sense of belonging.

Ms. Rollmann is the author of A Queer History of Newfoundland (Engen Books, 2023), which brings to light the long-suppressed histories of 2SLGBTQIA+ people in the province through archival work and more than 120 first-hand interviews.

But even before the groundbreaking publication of A Queer History, she was hard at work building platforms of public journalism and community engagement.

She is a founding editor of The Independent, an online source for independent journalism in the province, and her writing has appeared in venues such as Briarpatch, CBC, Xtra Magazine, Chatelaine, PopMatters, Riddle Fence and many others. Meanwhile, her academic work spans the fields of gender studies, labour studies, sociology, theatre and more.

And her engagement reaches beyond her writing desk. She’s a tireless activist committed to the queer, trans, feminist and labour movements.

She has held leadership roles, including President of CUPE Local 4554 at Memorial University, and she has served on boards such as Trans Support NL, the National Community Radio Association and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women.

As the program director at CHMR-FM, she uses public radio to amplify stories otherwise sidelined.

For her work across the university community, she has been awarded the Faculty/Staff Volunteer of the Year Award, the Outstanding Contribution to Graduate Student Life award and other honours recognizing her role in enriching campus life.

 

Rhea Rollmann’s A Queer History of Newfoundland was published by Engen Books in 2023. Photo courtesy of Rhea Rollmann.

 

What Rollmann contributes is twofold. She uncovers the riches of archival memory and ensures that our university and the public it serves engage with those histories in concrete and meaningful ways.

Her awards acknowledge work that resonates both within the academic community and beyond. She has won three Atlantic Journalism Awards, been a two-time finalist for the Canadian Association of Journalists awards, and in 2022 she won the Andrea Walker Memorial Prize for Feminist Health Journalism.

Her book A Queer History of Newfoundland was longlisted for the 2023 BMO Winterset Award.

Her academic honours include the Abella Scholarship for Studies in Equity, the Doris Anderson Graduate Scholarship in Feminist Research and the University Medal for Academic Excellence in Anthropology.

Ms. Rollmann’s work has allowed voices to emerge from silence, so they can be documented, remembered and integrated into our shared communal identity. Through teaching, public presentations, podcasts and writing, she helps ensure that queer history is not just a footnote but is central to understanding Newfoundland and Labrador’s cultural and political life.

She has helped shape conversations and curricula that matter. She brings visibility to campus through scholarship, public lectures and the work of the university’s EDI-AR office. Her presence reminds students and faculty alike that diversity, inclusion, human rights and social justice are integral to both learning and living.

In a time when many histories are contested, when communities still seek recognition or redress, her work is both a process of reclamation and a product of a profound desire for forward motion.

She has reached deep into the grand archive of Newfoundland and Labrador history and culture. And her work underscores an urgent truth: that those who were unheard deserve to be heard, and that when they are, our whole community is stronger.