Tag: NGOs (Page 1 of 3)

CNHH Presents: Essential Reads in the History of Humanitarianism

Top 5 Reads on the History of Development

~ as recommended by Jill Campbell-Miller, October 2023 ~

When I started looking into the history of Canadian foreign aid some fifteen years ago or so, not much scholarship existed about the history of development and foreign aid. As a student of Canadian foreign assistance, I was fortunate to have David Morrison’s Aid and Ebb Tide: A History of CIDA and Canadian Development Assistance. From a global perspective, the book most often referenced at the time was the late Gilbert Rist’s History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. Though the book is undoubtedly a valuable piece of scholarship, the late Dr. Rist was not a historian, and the book was too broad and too thinly sourced to be comparable to the type of historical scholarship I sought.

Since that time, the landscape has changed dramatically. While I struggled to put together five works of professional history on this subject in the late oughts, today, I struggle to narrow down the choices to just five. I might have felt alone starting my PhD, but little did I know there were many scholars with similar interests working on major projects. While it came late for my historiography chapter, maybe it is not too late for someone else’s PhD dissertation. Here are five to get you started:

  1. Stephen J. Macekura and Erez Manela. The Development Century: A Global History. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Fifteen years ago, I would have been amazed and delighted to find an edited collection of historical essays all covering histories of development. This collection is divided into four thematic groups that examine the origins of development, development in a decolonizing world, Cold War politics, and development and international society. It has a nice balance of geographies, topics, and temporal scopes, and is a good introduction to many of the key areas of study for historians of development. I have a particular soft spot for histories of development that locate the very early origins of the development project, and co-editor Manela’s chapter on “Smallpox and the Globalization of Development” is a great example of this.

  1. Matthew Connelly. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Harvard University Press, 2010.

While perhaps not a “history of development” proper, this book is an absolute must for understanding the development movement of the twentieth century. So many of the aid programs that developed in the 1950s and 1960s were based around the idea of controlling the world’s population, and so many of the prominent figures within important global institutions believed in a gospel of population control. Understanding this history is a crucial part of understanding the whole landscape of development in the mid-to-late twentieth century, and Connelly is not only a good historian, he is also an excellent story-teller.

  1. Sarah Lorenzini. Global Development: A Cold War History. Princeton University Press, 2019.

Odd Arne Westad refreshed the field of Cold War history by forcing his readers to see the rest of the world within a history that had been so often framed by American-Soviet politics in The Global Cold War (2005). Helpful as it was, as a reader in the 2000s, I also hoped for a book that would flesh out the way that development programming played into Cold War politics. Lorenzini’s book has finally brought these two fields together into one comprehensive volume. Arguing that development was “molded by the Cold War and, in turn, actively designed some of its structures” (4), Lorenzini’s book covers a huge terrain – from the colonial precedents of the interwar years to the major projects of American and Soviet aid, to those trying to challenge the bipolar constraints of the Cold War through development.

  1. Corinna R. Unger. International Development: A Postwar History. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Unger’s book is the type of textbook I craved as a student. It covers the vocabulary and terminology central to development history, the important philosophical and colonial precedents to the post-war development movement, the major programs of the twentieth century, and the critiques and challenges the development movement faced in the late twentieth century and beyond. Unger’s book is a solid first place to start for anyone interested in this field, and despite the breadth of its subject matter, it is quite concise.

  1. Kevin O’Sullivan. The NGO Moment: The Globalisation of Compassion from Biafra to Live Aid. Cambridge University Press, 2021.

I will finish with a book from one of the CNHH’s very own, Kevin O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan’s book is a much-needed bird’s-eye view on one of the most important driving forces of development in the latter years of the twentieth century – development and humanitarian non-governmental organizations. Past books on developmental NGOs have typically had an agenda – either as hagiographies or as take-downs – but O’Sullivan’s book is a critical yet nuanced look at the history of these important organizations within the geopolitical context of the larger development movement. Focusing on three states, Britain, Canada, and Ireland, O’Sullivan examines the “‘progressive, interventionist model of compassion that privileged aid over political solidarity with the Third World.” By taking a transnational perspective, O’Sullivan is able to emphasize the global linkages between many different NGOs, and the ideologies that linked them together. Also, there are just a lot of fascinating stories in this book.


Dr. Jill Campbell-Miller is a historian who specializes in twentieth-century Canadian political and social history. Her interests particularly focus on Canadian foreign assistance and humanitarianism in South Asia during the mid-twentieth century. Her dissertation, which she is currently revising to become a manuscript, examines the history of Canadian foreign aid in India during the 1950s. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Gorsebrook Research Institute at Saint Mary’s University, and in the Department of History at Carleton University, and presently works as a civil servant with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She is co-editor, with Greg Donaghy and Stacey Barker, of Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds: Canadian Women and the Search for Global Order (UBC Press, 2021). 

CfP: THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES, 1919-1991

A TWO-DAY SYMPOSIUM WILL BE HELD AT THE IFRC, GENEVA, ON THURSDAY AND FRIDAY 15-16 JUNE 2023.

Since 2019, members of the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project “Resilient Humanitarianism” have been working on aspects of the history of the League of Red Cross Societies. This has been a collaboration of interdisciplinary academics from Australia, Britain, and France. As a finale of the project, we seek scholars of the Red Cross Movement and Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies to contribute to a 2-day symposium to share their current research on the League of Red Cross Societies, discuss and analyze the history and impact of this important international organization that has been under-historicized to date.

From its beginnings in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, through to 1991 when it became the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent (IFRC), we have sought to understand how the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS), the world’s largest volunteer network, survived the turbulent interwar period and Second World War, and expanded through the decolonization and globalization era of the Cold War. Examining the history of this transnational humanitarianism organization offers new insights into how organizations respond to various geopolitical, cultural, and social shifts over time and place.

For this symposium, we seek contributions from scholars working on major platforms of the League of Red Cross Societies such as health and public health policy, disaster management, aid and relief, the Junior Red Cross, and the development of national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and League infrastructure, and international collaborations with other international bodies such as WHO and the United Nations. We are particularly interested in hearing from those working on the post-World War II period and the emergence of new national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies following national independence and how those new national Societies interacted with the League in Geneva.

Questions to consider include, but are not limited to:

  • How did the LRCS develop as an institution of its own? How did it navigate the period 1920-45? What programs did it support?
  • How did the LRCS interact with newly established national Red Cross/Red Crescent societies of recently independent countries in the Middle-East, Africa and Asia?
  • What programs did the LRCS establish in the post-WWII period, and were they successful on the ground? (eg. public health, disaster relief, first aid, etc.)
  • How did the LRCS navigate the Cold War and its relations with Soviet republics and their allies?
  • What role have gender, volunteering, and climate change played? How can we explain the League’s institutional resilience in the twentieth century?

We will be joined by Emeritus Professor David P. Forsythe (University of Nebraska-Lincoln). A welcome reception will be held on the evening of Wednesday 14 June at the IFRC.

Please send a 300-word abstract and a 100-word biography to resilienthumsymposium2023@gmail.com by 9 September 2022. Contact melanie.oppenheimer@anu.edu.au for more information.

Convenors and Project Team Members:

Professor Melanie Oppenheimer (ANU) – Lead Chief Investigator

Dr. Rosemary Cresswell (Strathclyde) – Partner Investigator

Dr. Romain Fathi (Flinders/Sciences Po) – Chief Investigator

Professor Susanne Schech (Flinders) – Chief Investigator

Professor Neville Wylie (Stirling) – Partner Investigator

Dr. Kate Laing (ANU) – Project Officer/Research Assistant

Jordan Evans (Flinders) – PhD student

The History, and Future, of Transnational Humanitarian Work

Report from Two Years of Co-Creation of Knowledge, Policy, and Education Materials

by Helen Kennedy

August 12, 2022

Back on 6 April 2020, we announced the beginning of a Mitacs-funded research partnership between the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History, Carleton University, and five Canadian NGOs. At that time, we thought pandemic delays might extend our four-month project perhaps an additional two or three months. Now, over two years later, I am happy to announce that the project titled “Micro-Histories of Transnational Humanitarian Aid: Co-Creation of Knowledge, Policy, and Education Materials” has officially come to an end!

For the last two years, I have had the privilege of working with the Latin American Working Group, WUSC (World University Service of Canada), IMPACT (formerly Partnership Africa Canada), the Multicultural Council of Saskatchewan, and the Disability Hub (Centre for Lebanese Studies / Oxfam Quebec) to learn more about the work that they do, tell their stories, and contribute in some small way to the future of their organizations.

Having an opportunity to delve into the diverse histories and policies that shape the work of these disparate organizations has made the long pandemic days a little more interesting. The interviews and archival research I conducted covered a broad spectrum of transnational NGO work, from advocating for more inclusive election practices in Lebanon to contextualizing the work of Black leaders in Saskatchewan at the turn of the 20th century to challenges facing organizations opposed to conflict diamonds to the histories of refugee resettlement and anti-free trade advocacy.

Each organization had unique research challenges and the final reports will be used by the organizations to meet diverse needs.

As the Latin American Working Group grapples with how best to communicate to new researchers the relevancy of their work in the history of transnational solidarity and advocacy movements, we recovered four boxes of archival material and organized their transfer to the LAWG Library at York University. Interviews with former volunteers and the accompanying report sheds light on how anti-free trade solidarity includes more than simply a history of transnational labour history: the histories of refugees, human rights, environmental protection, and diplomacy are bound up in the history of LAWG and Common Frontiers.

As WUSC celebrated its 100th anniversary during the pandemic, we undertook a history of their involvement with Hungarian refugee student resettlement to shine a light on the interconnected nature of their history and their current programming. Today, WUSC hosts over 150 university students annually as part of its Student Refugee Program.

As a founding civil society member of the Kimberly Process, we worked with IMPACT to explore the history of civil society involvement in international diamond regulation. The work aims to support their ongoing advocacy work regarding resource extraction and artisanal mining.

The Multicultural Council of Saskatchewan has been doing incredible work surrounding anti-racism and educating the community on the benefits of cultural diversity since 1975. Our research project aimed to provide context for the life and achievements of Dr. Alfred Shadd, a Black educator, politician, doctor, entrepreneur, and civic leader at the turn of the 20th century.

The Disability Hub at the Centre for Lebanese Studies used our research into inclusive election best practices in North America and Europe as part of their lobbying campaign to improve inclusivity in the May 2022 elections in Lebanon.

It has been immensely varied and gratifying work and I am grateful that our stakeholders gave me their time, expertise, and advice as they navigated adapting their organizations’ work to the online space. I am looking forward to seeing the ways that all the organizations continue to explore their histories in order to shape their futures.


Helen Kennedy is a PhD candidate at Carleton University where she studies international intervention and humanitarian action in Bosnia (1992-1995).

Twelfth Bulletin of the CNHH, May 2022

Twelfth Bulletin of the CNHH, May 2022

The Twelfth Bulletin of the CNHH has now been sent out to the membership.  If you missed it, the complete PDF of the bulletin can be found here: Twelfth Bulletin PDF

It has been more than a year since the last bulletin of May 2021. We hope that you are all well and that you will continue to send news, posts and announcements.

I. PANEL AND ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The annual CNHH sponsored panel on Legacies of Colonialism in Africa: Reconsidering Conquest, Capitalism, and Transnationalism in the 19th and 20th Centuries Héritages du colonialisme en Afrique : nouveau regard sur la conquête,
le capitalisme et le transnationalisme aux XIXe et XXe siècles  will take place on Wednesday the 18th of May, from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm Ottawa time.

We are looking forward to watching our colleagues:

  • Stephen Osei Owusu (PhD candidate, Carleton University), “The Mankessim Riots of 1849: a Case of Contested Ethno-forestry practices or Conflict between ‘Europeanized’ and Indigenous Africans.”
  • Simplice Ayangma Bonoho (Banting Fellow, Bishop’s University), « Le « Centre de Rééducation des handicapés de Yaoundé » (CRHY) : Un projet humanitaire
    d’envergure ? : Pour une relecture des relations diplomatiques canado-
    camerounaises (1968-1980). »

  • Chair | Président : Robin Gendron

The full program of the CHA virtual conference is here: https://cha-shc.ca/_uploads/626ac9b5a803e.pdf  Every participant must register for congress here: https://fhss.swoogo.com/22-registration-inscription. Please note that the CHA has waived the registration fee for the CHA Annual Meeting for graduate students, unemployed and precarious historians.

The Annual meeting of the CNHH will take place at lunch time on the same day, on Wednesday the 18th from 12:30 to 2:00 Ottawa time. The agenda will include research updates, plans for the future, website update, discussion of the website, sponsored panel for 2023, and appointment of future officers. Let us know if you would like to add other points. Here is where to register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/annual-meeting-of-the-canadian-network-on-humanitarian-history-2022-tickets-333051896187

II. NEWS FROM MEMBERS

Jill Campbell-Miller presented her post-doctoral work on “Hydroelectric Dams and the Hinterlands in Canada and India, 1953-1958” at the Ottawa Historical Association on February 15. The recording will be posted shortly on the website of the OHA.

Sarah Glassford started a series of best reads in humanitarian history, last Fall, in the blog of the CNHH. Three have been published so far.

Dominique Marshall published two articles: “‘CIDA Gives You the World!’ Visual Media and Development Education in Canadian Schools: 1980-2000” & “Ethical Traditions in Humanitarian Photography and the Challenges of the Digital Age  – Four Conversations with Canadian Communications Officers”, in theJournal of Humanitarian Affairs, Special issue on “Humanitarian Action in the Age of Visual Media: The Past and Present of Humanitarian Communication” Fall 2021, which came from a CNHH panel at the Canadian Historical Association two years previously.

Stephen Osei-Owusu is convening the Shannon Lecture Series in History – Spring 2022, on the regulation of natural resource extraction in Canada and Africa. Many NGOs are involved.

III. WELCOME TO NEW MEMBERS

William Plowright, Lecturer – Peace and Conflict Studies, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, who recently authored Armed Groups and International Legitimacy: Child Soldiers in Intra-State Conflict. (Routledge, 2021)

Robert Anthony Ventresca, Academic Dean (Interim), King’s University College at Western University.

IV. ARCHIVES NEWS

In collaboration with Carleton University’s Archives and Special Collections we helped the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters (CCPFH) to prepare a successful application to deposit its archives at Library and Archives Canada, which was successful.

The recordings of the twelve group conversations of the “Oxfam Canada between 1964 and 1990: A collaborative memory project” coordinated by Oxfam veterans Marc Allain, Susan Johnson and Lawrence Cummings, with the support of Dominique Marshall, will be deposited at Carleton University Archives and Special Collections later in 2022.

V. COMMON INITIATIVES FROM MEMBERS

At an informal meeting held in January 2022, the CNHH adopted a small Steering Committee. Here are the responsibilities.

Blog and website: Sarah Glassford

Bulletin: Helen Kennedy and Dominique Marshall

Twitter: Lydia Wytenbroek

CHA work

  • Regular updates: Helen Kennedy
    • Annual meetings: Nassisse Solomon
    • Panel at Congress: Jill Campbell-Miller 2022 Nassisse Solomon & David Webster afterwards
    • Community links: Dominique Marshall

Events: Lydia Wytenbroek                                       

Grants, joint research projects: Dominique Marshall

On March 30, Lydia Wytenbroek organised the CNHH sponsored Book Launch for The NGO Moment: The Globalisation of Compassion from Biafra to Live Aid, written by CNHH long-time partner in Ireland, Kevin O-Sullivan, with guest speakers Ruth Compton Brouwer, John W. Foster, Laura Madokoro, and Ian Smillie.

VI. WORK WITH NGOS

Carleton fourth-year student Cailtin Arbour has started an internship with Farm radio International to produce oral histories of the impact of FRI on local communities on Africa, under the supervision of Sylvie Harrison.

VII. TEACHING

Fourth-year students of D. Marshall’s STEM in the History of Canadian Society and Policy course worked in collaboration with the master seminar of Soenke Kunkle on Science and Technology in Transnational Relations at the JFK Institute of North American Studies. The products of the nine transnational teams are posted on the teaching website Recipro: eight timelines of case studies Science and international humanitarianism. The German-based humanitarian transport drone company Wingcopter and the Canadian based NGO Farm Radio International accompanied the making of the projects.

VIII. BLOGS & TALKS PUBLISHED BY THE CNHH SINCE THE LAST BULLETIN

Preserving the Legacy of Influential Canadian Humanitarian Lewis Perinbam (1925-2007), April 25, 2022, by Sarah Glassford.

Nursing, Empire, & Mobility: Lydia Wytenbroek on American Mission Nurses in Iran & Iranian Nurses in the U.S., 1907-1979, Webinar Report. March 2022, by Maia Luger.

Lost and Fonds. Declassification of Government Records in Canada., January 2022, by Isabel Campbell.

CNHH Presents: Essential Reads in the History of Humanitarianism, September 2021, by Sarah Glassford.

Was it really “different back then?” Reflecting on current global health ethics with a NFB film about CUSO, 1965, September 2021, by Sonya de Laat.

If you haven’t followed the CNHH on Twitter, please do so! Feel free to tag us in your announcements, and we will retweet! @AidHistoryCan

Copyright © 2022 Canadian Network on Humanitarian History, all rights reserved.

Preserving the Legacy of Influential Canadian Humanitarian Lewis Perinbam (1925-2007)

by Sarah Glassford

April 25, 2022

Over the last two years, the CNHH has worked with the Lewis Perinbam Innovation and Impact Awards to preserve and share the memory and legacy of one of the most influential humanitarians in Canadian history: the late Lewis Perinbam.

The Malysian-born, Scottish-educated Perinbam spent most of his career in the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and “anyone who worked in the international development field in Canada during the 1970s and 1980s would be familiar” with his name. Although Perinbam’s work is well-documented in archival collections and discussed in scholarly publications, those who knew and worked with him wished to make his impact more accessible and widely known to the general public.  As one writer summed up his remarkable career: “Lewis was instrumental in fostering partnerships between Canada and the Global South, in making education more accessible to all and in creating opportunities for young people to become more involved in making our world a better place.” [1]

Thanks to a grant from the MITACS agency, Carleton University doctoral candidate in History Anna Kozlova was able to conduct a series of interviews with friends, relatives, supervisors, mentees, and co-workers of Lewis Perinbam, exploring his significant role shaping humanitarian work and humanitarian workers in both governmental (CIDA) and non-governmental organizations of the later 20th c. The result is a fascinating composite portrait of a pivotal player in the Canadian and international development scene.

Kozlova’s thoughtful interviews, as well as a selection of archival documents not previously available to the public, a podcast, and a timeline of Perinbam’s life can be found in a curated Lewis Perinbam web portal hosted on the World University Service Canada (WUSC) website. Information about the Lewis Perinbam Award (for exceptional volunteers in the field of development work) is also available through the portal.

As ever, the CNHH is proud to support efforts like this one which work to preserve and share the history of humanitarian aid and development work in Canada and beyond.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Anna Kozlova is a doctoral candidate in History at Carleton University and CNHH member interested in migration, diaspora, oral history and transnationalism. She was the lead researcher on a MITACS-funded project “Two case studies in the public history of international development policies in Canada: the Lebanese Special Measures Program (1975-1990) and The Life of Lewis Perinbam (1925-2008).”

Sarah Glassford is the current editor of the CNHH blog, archivist in the University of Windsor’s Leddy Library Archives & Special Collections, and a social historian of 20th c. Canada.


[1] WUSC, Lewis Perinbam web portal homepage, https://lewisperinbam.wusc.ca/ (accessed 21 April 2022).

Call for Papers and Thematic Special Issues

The Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (CFPJ) is seeking
submissions for its 28th and 29th volume, to be published in 2022/23. CFPJ
is a fully peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal published by the
Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton
University, Canada. Readers include government officials, academics,
students of international affairs, journalists, NGOs, and the private
sector. Established in 1992, CFPJ is now Canada’s leading journal of
international affairs.

Full articles: 6000-7000 words;

Policy Commentaries: short policy briefings engaging key topics in international policy, 1500- 2000 words;

Book reviews: 1000 word maximum for single reviews, 2500 for multi-book review.

To begin the submission process: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcfp –

For Author Guidelines : http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcfp20/current

To submit a proposal for a guest edited thematic issue:
https://www.tandf.co.uk//journals/cfp/rcfpcfpguide.pdf

Please email inquiries to David Carment, Editor (david.carment@carleton.ca) with the subject heading: “CFPJ – Call for submissions.”

International Solidarity from a Feminist and Anti-Racist Perspective

The Social Change Hub 

presents:

“International Solidarity from a Feminist and Anti-Racist Perspective” 

by 

Dr. Maïka SondarjeeProfessor in the School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

4-5:30pm

All welcome!

on-line event 

(see Teams link below)

Dr. Sondarjee’s research addresses the inclusion of local populations in development policymaking at the World Bank, the marginalization of feminist research in International Relations, the white savior complex in international development, as well as the inequalities supported by the institutionalized world order.  She was was a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the Department of political science and Centre de recherches et d’études internationales, Université de Montréal in 2020-21, is a Board Member of the NGO Alternatives, is co-founder of the organization Femmes Expertes, a member of the SSHRC programs’ committee, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID).

If you would like more information please contact Marie-Camille Théorêt (mtheoret20@ubishops.ca) or Bruce Gilbert (bgilbrert@ubishops.ca). Thanks!

The Social Change Hub organizes talks, workshops and other events at Bishop’s on themes of social justice. 
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NzI3Y2JlM2YtODkyNi00OTAwLTkwZDYtYzBmNmQxMTJjMDIy%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2260409c15-dd37-4640-975b-9eaa707437b7%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2233f0ad06-2c73-47e9-bc57-c72bc0c352d8%22%7d

Upcoming Talk on Canada’s first NGO, the Overseas Book Centre

On 5 November 2021 at 4pm ET, Jody Mason (Department of English, Carleton University) will deliver the 2021 Canadian Literature Centre Scholarly Lecture, hosted by the University of Alberta. This event will take place on Zoom.

Dr. Mason’s talk, “The ‘Creative Crusade’: Settler Colonial Antinomies and Books for Development in the Age of Three Worlds,” examines the postwar book donation schemes created by Canada’s first NGO, the Overseas Book Centre.

You can register for the meeting using this link: 
https://ualberta-ca.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJElc-2upjsoEtHAzQtD8Z0BKLxhCeACQUP2 

CNHH’s Seventh Annual Meeting Goes Virtual

by Anna Kozlova

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian Network of Humanitarian History’s (CNHH) seventh annual meeting was held virtually through the video conferencing platform Zoom. The virtual format of this year’s meeting resulted in a record high turnout with a number of overseas partners joining the meeting, demonstrating one of the rare benefits of the pandemic.

This was noted during the planning for the Canadian Historical Association’s (CHA) 2022 conference, where the goal is to have an Africa-centred panel as there has never been an area-focused panel focusing on development aid and humanitarianism in Africa. Organizers of the panel are considering the possibility of having a partially virtual format as that would allow for greater participation.

In spite of the pandemic, the past year has been a productive one for CNHH members. During the meeting, updates were provided on two MITACS-funded projects, Two case studies in the public history of international development policies in Canada: the Lebanese Special Measures Program (1975-1990) and The Life of Lewis Perinbam (1925-2008) and Micro-Histories of Transnational Humanitarian Aid: Co-Creation of Knowledge, Policy, and Education Materials. David Webster, Professor of History at Bishop’s University, talked about the digital initiatives that he is involved in which include launching a website inquiry on the history of Canadian development assistance, the Timor-Leste International Solidarity Archive and History Beyond Borders, which publishes e-dossiers on international history. Dominique Marshall, Professor of History at Carleton University, talked about her continued work with Archival Rescue on which is she working with alongside Hunter McGill, Senior Fellow at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa, and Chris Trainor, Head Archivist at Carleton University.

Digital media was central to a lot of the discussions that took place during the meeting. Dominique has recently collaborated with Nicolas Lépine, an Associate Professor of History at Lakehead University on Recipro – a collaborative teaching website, meanwhile, Jill undertook the important role of overhauling and modernizing CNHH’s website, which is currently seeking blog contributions.

In terms of future projects, suggestions for a larger, more comprehensive project that explores the history of Canadian development efforts and a project focusing on visual histories were discussed. Under normal circumstances, CNHH tries to partner with local NGOs from the region where the annual meeting is being held, however, with the current remote environment, any NGOs, regardless of their location, are welcome to collaborate. Sarah Glassford, an archivist at the University of Windsor, talked about the value of establishing connections with NGOs as these connections often become long-term partnerships.

This meeting served as a wonderful example of the ability to productively adapt to the turbulent times we are currently living in. Throughout the discussions taking place at this meeting, CNHH members demonstrated the many ways that our current remote and digital environment has helped to eradicate some barriers to participation and collaboration, bringing the development community closer together.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Anna Kozlova is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Carleton University. She was the lead researcher on the MITACS-funded project “Two case studies in the public history of international development policies in Canada: the Lebanese Special Measures Program (1975-1990) and The Life of Lewis Perinbam (1925-2008).”

Eleventh Bulletin of the CNHH, May 2021

The Eleventh Bulletin of the CNHH has now been sent out to the membership.  If you missed it, the complete PDF of the bulletin can be found here: Bulletin of the CNHH May 2021 FINAL

It has been more than a year since the last bulletin of April 2020. We hope that you are all well and that you will continue to send news, posts and announcements.

  1. I. PANEL AND ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The annual CNHH sponsored panel on “Making Connections with the Public: Alternative Approaches to Learning History” will take place on Monday May 31, from 11:00 to 12:15 Ottawa time, virtually. The program of the CHA virtual conference is here: https://cha-shc.ca/_uploads/6092c3d816fd7.pdf

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