Graduate Students
Ph.D Candidates
Allison Bennett
Research Interests: History of War and Society; History of Gender and Sexuality; History of Medicine
Current Research: My doctoral research examines British, Australian, and New Zealand servicemen’s sexual encounters with civilian women in First World War Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Macedonia, and how these encounters and resulting cases of venereal disease were understood according to imperial perceptions of race, gender, sexuality, and health. In analyzing the nature of these wartime sexual encounters and how they were policed and managed, I show that these encounters stressed pseudoscientific ideas about race and male and female bodies; challenged the white heterosexual male and his imperial and military identity; and called into question servicemen’s veteran pensions.
Supervisor: Dr. Justin Fantauzzo
Rodrigo De Oliveira Miranda
Supervisor: Dr. Sébastien Rossignol
Kiersten Fage
BMus. Performance, University of Western Australia, 2014
B.A. (Honours) Music Studies, University of Western Australia, 2015
MMus. Historical Performance, McGill University, 2018
Research Interests: Cultural History, North Atlantic Slave Studies, Historical Musicology, Historical Sound Studies, Black Performance, American Studies, Material Culture Studies.
Current Research: My doctoral research investigates how enslaved and newly free peoples of North America engaged with musical instruments of European origin. Understanding musical instruments as part of the material culture of slavery, it asks how musical instruments held power and meaning within the context of North Atlantic Slavery and how performance on musical instruments of European origin are entangled in wider historical narratives of violence, resistance, colonialism, empire and broader ideas about race and social class. My research asks what performance on musical instruments of European origin can tell us about the lives of the enslaved and how these associated histories contributed to the development of early North American soundscapes.
Supervisor: Dr. Neil Kennedy
Stewart Lawrence
B.A. in History, Sam Houston State University, 2018
M.A. in History, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2020
Research Interests:
Social History, Swedish History, Labour History, Gender History, Economic History and the History of Industrialisation, Urban History
Current Research: My dissertation research focuses on the role of alcohol consumption in the formation of a working-class identity within the taverns of late nineteenth-century Stockholm. As part of my analysis, I focus on the “weapons of the weak” and “economy of makeshifts” employed by the lower classes as they attempted to carve out a living within the capital city’s transforming economy and shifting urban environment in the wake of industrialisation. This includes the stratification of the working class and its diverging culture, gender roles and gendered work, placemaking in working-class taverns and neighbourhoods, and the contested space of Stockholm’s Gamla Stan.
Supervisor: Dr. Stephan Curtis
Gene Long
M.A. History, Memorial University, 1993
Current Interests: Archival framing of the Labrador Boundary Decision of 1927.
Supervisor: Dr. Sean Cadigan
Matt Papai
B.A. History, The Ohio State University, 2010.
M.A. History, University of Alberta, 2014.
Research Interests: Cultural History, Environmental History, Food/Alcohol, Tourism, and Public History.
Current Research: The focus of my research is the role of consumable products and commodities within the tourist experience, specifically the investigation of how certain consumable commodities have gathered tourist attention, and what these commodities represent to local populations. I am also interested in the ways in which specific foods and drinks contribute to the formation of cultural identity on national, regional, and local scales.
Supervisor: Dr. Dominique Brégent-Heald
Norman B. Potter
B.A. History, Mount Royal University, 2016
Research Interests: American cultural history, Mexican-American relations, borderlands, Canadian cultural history
Current Research: Popular construction of the Calgary Stampede.
Supervisor: Dr. Dominique Brégent-Heald
M.A. Candidates
Mariana Alza Spilborghs
Supervisor: Dr. Dominique Brégent-Heald
Justin Crosby
Supervisor: Dr. Sébastien Rossignol
Joshua James Cullinane
B.A. (Honors), MUN, 2019
Research Interests: Alcohol Studies, Film Studies, American History
Current Research: I am studying the portrayal of alcoholism in Hollywood film noir movies in the 1940s and 1950s.
Supervisor: Dr. Dominique Brégent-Heald
Colin Forward
Supervisor: Dr. Justin Fantauzzo
Madhavi Kahapala Arachchi
Supervisor: Dr. Sébastien Rossignol
Patrick Kennedy
Supervisor: Dr. Jim Connor
Bryan Marsh
B.A (History), Memorial University, 2005
B.Ed. (Intermediate Secondary) Memorial University, 2008
Certificate in Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University, 2005
Research Interests: Newfoundland and Labrador History, Forest History, Transportation History, the Vietnam War, 19th and 20th Century World History.
Current Project: Tentative, “A Grim and Costly Business”: The Decline of the Pulp and Paper, and Pulpwood Harvesting Industry in Central Newfoundland 1959-2009.
Supervisor: Dr. Sean Cadigan
Bryan Poirier
Supervisor: Dr. Neil Kennedy
Samuel Primmer
Supervisor: Dr. Jeff Webb
Emma Rossiter
Supervisor: Dr. Jeff Webb
Jessica Van Bussel
Supervisor: Dr. Justin Fantauzzo
Christopher Winsor
B.A. History (Honours), Memorial University, 2021
Research Interests: British Empire, Colonial Knowledge, Racial Ideology, Frontiers and Borderlands
Current Research: My research explores the intersection of race and colonial power in nineteenth-century British Honduras (present-day Belize). It examines how colonial authorities used racial categorization to make sense of, and assert control over, the colony’s northern frontier as it was ethnically and politically reconfigured by the arrival of refugees fleeing the Caste War of Yucatán.
Supervisor: Dr. Michael Kirkpatrick