Brazilian emerging scholar Henrique Schlumberger Vitchmichen visits Carleton University from April to October 2025
My name is Henrique, and I am currently a PhD student at the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Marion Brepohl. I am developing a thesis titled Echoes of the Border: Refugee Letters and the Ukrainian Committee in World War II. Below is a brief summary of my ongoing research:
My work aims to investigate and analyze the creation and activities of the Ukrainian Committee for War Victims’ Relief in Europe after the end of World War II, a period in which the continent was overwhelmed by thousands of refugees, war victims, and displaced persons from various regions and nationalities—including Ukrainians who fled their homes or were taken as prisoners following the German invasion of their territory.
Housed in hastily constructed refugee camps across Europe, often lacking adequate resources, these individuals endured the pain of their losses, the humiliation and violence of their conditions, and, ultimately, hunger and material deprivation. In response, many countries, through aid committees, began receiving requests for assistance and providing support in every possible way. One such committee was founded in 1945 in Brazil, in the city of Curitiba, state of Paraná—a region that had received a significant number of Ukrainian immigrants since the late 19th century.
Letter from a Young refugee telling his story in Lviv on the early years of war, and asking for materials, like pencil, paper, ballons, and other thing to play. From the archives of the Ukrainian Society of Brazil.
Operating under the supervision of the Agricultural Instructional Union (now known as the Ukrainian Society of Brazil), the committee maintained correspondence with numerous other organizations, including the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, as well as others in England, France, Argentina, Italy, and the United States. Additionally, it was part of the Central Ukrainian Relief Bureau (CURB), whose member countries included Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Italy, and Switzerland.
Through constant communication, these committees played a crucial role in sending supplies to refugee camps and facilitating immigration opportunities for displaced persons. Moreover, they regularly received letters from refugees seeking provisions or information. In the case of the Brazilian Committee, approximately three hundred letters remain preserved under the care of the Ukrainian Society of Brazil. These letters are currently being translated and analyzed as part of my research. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Dominique Marshall, I am eager to be there as soon as possible, as a Visiting Scholar, and to contribute in any way I can to Carleton University and to the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History.
Correspondence between the leadership of the Brazilian and Canadian committees, where the Canadians are orienting the Brazilians about financial business related to the Central Ukrainian Relief Bureau (CURB). From the archives of the Ukrainian Society of Brazil.
Please join the History Department for a talk with Dr. Severyan Dyakonov, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, entitled “The Soviet Red Cross in 1950s-60s India.”
Abstract:
During 1950s-60s decolonization, the Soviet Red Cross aimed to establish hospitals in India as a model of socialist humanitarian aid. Soviet doctors—mostly women—integrated into Indian hospitals and medical schools to showcase the merits of socialism. The International Red Cross provided Moscow with a neutral humanitarian platform to engage non-aligned states while avoiding accusations of spreading Communist propaganda. Moscow instead used it to redefine humanitarianism itself—equating it with socialism.
The rise of generative AI has sparked both innovation and controversy in global health storytelling. Numerous global healthcare aid organizations are embracing AI-generated imagery to depict communities in crisis—but at what cost?
Artificial images in global health: Fakery before and in the era of AI is a thought-provoking exhibition that explores the evolving role of artificial imagery in global humanitarian healthcare aid. Displayed is a collection of AI-generated and historical visuals that challenge perceptions of authenticity, fakery, ethics, and the power of images in shaping global health narratives.
What happens when synthetic images replace real moments? Can AI help or harm efforts toward ethical representation? And in a time of decolonization and authentic partnerships, what does it mean to rely on ‘fake’ visuals?
Experience the exhibition and be part of the conversation.
L’objectif de ce cours est de fournir aux étudiant.es et aux professionnel.les les bases du droit international humanitaire et la possibilité d’appliquer ces connaissances à travers des études de cas réalistes et une journée complète d’exercices de simulation.
Les candidatures d’étudiants universitaires, de fonctionnaires, d’organisations non gouvernementales, de journalistes et de toute personne désireuse d’en savoir plus sur le DIH sont les bienvenues. La préférence sera donnée aux participants ayant une expérience dans l’application ou la théorie du DIH, du droit international des droits de la personne ou du travail humanitaire. Les cours d’été seront dispensés par des universitaires et des experts canadiens et internationaux reconnus du ministère de la Défense nationale et du ministère de la Justice du Canada.
Veuillez noter que les formulaires d’inscription pour la 17e édition du cours d’été en DIH seront disponibles le 1er mars 2025. Si vous avez des questions, n’hésitez surtout pas à communiquer avec nous à l’adresse dih-ihl@uOttawa.ca.
The aim of this course is to provide students and professionals with the fundamentals of international humanitarian law and the opportunity to apply this knowledge through realistic case studies and a full day of simulation exercise.
Applications are welcome from university students, government employees, non-governmental organizations, journalists, and anyone interested in learning more about IHL. Preference will be given to participants with a background in the application or the theory of IHL, international human rights law or humanitarian work. The summer school will be taught by leading Canadian and international scholars and experts from the Department of National Defence and the Department of Justice Canada.
Please note that the registration forms for the 17th edition of the Summer School on IHL will be available on March 1st, 2025. If you have any questions about the summer school, please do not hesitate to contact us at dih-ihl@uOttawa.ca.
The CNHH is pleased to announce that a peer-reviewed article relating some of its members’ experiences engaging with communities and organizations around issues of humanitarian archives is now available to read in Issue 256 of the Revue internationale des études du développement.
“Creating Development Archives Ethically from an Over-Developed Country” appears in a special issue dealing with development archives around the world. The article is available online and open access at: https://journals.openedition.org/ried/23482.
Co-written by David Webster, Dominique Marshall, Chris Trainor, Sarah Glassford, and Eve Dutil, the article grew out of a thought-provoking roundtable sponsored by the CNHH at the 2023 conference of the Canadian Historical Association (CHA).
The roundtable, which was chaired by Glassford (Leddy Library Archives & Special Collections, University of Windsor), featured a lively discussion between Marshall (Department of History, Carleton University), Webster (Department of History & Global Studies, Bishop’s University), Trainor (MacOdrum Library Archives & Special Collections, Carleton University), Melanie Oppenheimer (Emeritus professor, Flinders University), and Fabrice Weissman (Centre de réflexion sur l’action et les savoirs humanitaires, Médecins sans frontières), on a wide array of issues facing scholars and practitioners who engage with archives of development and humanitarianism.
The discussion raised many points the participants were keen to explore further, and a subsequent call for papers from the Revue offered the opportunity to do so. Marshall, Glassford, Trainor, and Webster were joined by Dutil (formerly Bishop’s University, now a graduate student at Carleton University) in co-writing the paper, while Oppenheimer and Weissman graciously granted permission for their roundtable insights to be used as needed.
The result is an article that grapples with where the primary sources documenting humanitarian action end up archived, how, and by whom. It also highlights the direct work of the CNHH and its individual members in helping to preserve and make those primary sources available for future generations – work of which this network can be justly proud. Additionally, the composition of both the original roundtable and the resulting article’s team of co-authors offers yet another example of the CNHH’s commitment to bringing together scholars and practitioners, and the positive results that can come from those encounters.
As an affiliated committee of the CHA, the CNHH has an annual opportunity to sponsor a traditional panel of research papers or a roundtable like the 2023 one, as part of the CHA conference. If you have a theme or idea in the area of humanitarian or development history, around which you would like to organize a panel or roundtable, consider reaching out to the CNHH at aidhistory.canada@gmail.com, or by individually contacting one of the Steering Committee members (*whose contact information is available in the Members section of the CNHH website). It’s a great chance to link your individual research to a broader conversation, and to tap into the network the CNHH has built.
Dr. Sarah Glassford is an archivist at the Leddy Library Archives & Special Collections, with responsibility for community collections. She is also a social historian of modern Canada, the author of Mobilizing Mercy: A History of the Canadian Red Cross (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), and a founding member of the CNHH.
À propos de la bourse Cadieux-Léger – date limite de candidature : 13 janvier 2025
– Objectif : La bourse soutient les étudiants de doctorat qui mènent des recherches sur des sujets pertinents pour Affaires mondiales Canada.
– Rôle : Les boursiers travaillent en tant qu’analystes intégrés au Pôle ouvert d’analyse, contribuant à la recherche, aux notes d’orientation et aux efforts d’engagement.
– Durée de la bourse : La bourse s’étend sur une période maximale de douze mois, avec un engagement maximum de 25 heures par semaine.
– Bourse : Les candidats retenus reçoivent une bourse, plafonnée à 48 000 dollars en fonction de la durée de leur poste.
De plus amples informations sont disponibles sur l’offre d’emploi.
The French Association for Canadian Studies (AFEC) has issued a call for papers for its 48th Annual Conference, which will take place at Université Grenoble Alpes from June 18-20, 2025.
This event is aimed at all doctoral students, post-docs and other young researchers at the start of their careers (master’s students, temporary lecturers (ATERs), young PhDs without a contract) working on the Canadian cultural area – be it Anglophone Canada, Francophone Canada, Quebec, Indigenous People – or on themes related to Canada.
To echo the 2024-2025 edition of the Seasons of Canada (Saisons du Canada) organized by the Grenoble Centre for Canadian Studies, the general theme chosen for this next congress will be “Transition(s)”.
Under this broad and flexible theme, AFEC welcomes both theoretical and empirical contributions, from all disciplines – civilization, history, linguistics, literature, geography, law, sociology, political science, anthropology, arts, philosophy – reflecting the diversity of research carried out by up-and-coming researchers in Canadian Studies. Contributions may explore contemporary or historical issues related to Canada, including but not limited to:
Environmental or climate issues (ecological transition, energy, health), including ecological and ecofeminist perspectives;
Social reforms and political struggles in Canada, particularly those relating to the rights and representation of minority groups (indigenous people, 2SLGBTQ+, etc.);
Migration and (cross-)border issues;
The development and socio-economic impacts of new technologies (artificial intelligence, cybersecurity);
Current issues in indigenous studies, with a particular focus on movements of cultural and political resurgence and reappropriation;
The circulation of decolonial, postcolonial and/or feminist theories and practices in Canadian research (through the notions of positionality, situated knowledge, intersectionality, care, etc.);
The evolution of literary and artistic forms;
Linguistic issues (e.g. the revitalization / reclamation of Indigenous languages, the evolution of Canadian and Quebec language policies, debates surrounding certain linguistic practices, issues of linguistic representation in the media, etc.)
They should include a title, a 300-word abstract in English or French, 4 to 5 bibliographical references (not included in the total word count), and a short bio-bibliographical note (name, current status, institutional affiliation, fields of research and recent publications if applicable).
Following the review by the scientific committee, a response will be sent by January 15 at the latest to those who submitted a proposal.
Global Affairs Canada – Open Insights Hub – POR Ottawa (Ontario) From September 2024 to August 2025 The Cadieux-Léger Fellowship will last up to 12 months. The Fellow will receive a total bursary not greater than $48,000 contingent on duration.
Closing date: 25 June 2024 – 23:59, Pacific TimeWho can apply: Persons residing in Canada, and Canadian citizens and Permanent residents abroad.
From GC Jobs:
The Open Insights Hub of Global Affairs Canada (GAC) is pleased to announce the selection process for the 2024-2025 Cadieux-Léger Fellowship.
The Cadieux-Léger Fellow is integrated within the Open Insights Hub at GAC as an analyst. The Hub engages with external experts and fosters relationships with the knowledge institutions as part of its research and analysis on foreign, economic and international assistance policy issues, as well as environmental scanning to identify emerging global trends and changes. The Cadieux-Léger Fellow’s activities will focus on themes of relevance to Canadian international interests.
While at GAC, the Fellow is expected to advance the Hub’s current thematic agenda, including understanding the evolving structure of international relations and its implications for Canada. Priority areas of focus include: Canada’s vulnerabilities and opportunities in the context of geopolitical risk; navigating great power competition; engaging the middle ground (or Global South); examining Canada’s international toolkit of policies and programs; the Canada-United States bilateral relationship and impact on Canada’s broader foreign policy; economic security and resilience; and the international dimensions of horizontal issues as emerging technologies, or climate change and the green transition.
We welcome proposals related to these themes and others that have clear relevance to Canadian foreign policy priorities, notably international advocacy and diplomacy. The relevance and quality of the research proposal is an important factor in the selection process, as are interpersonal skills and capacity for engagement and teamwork.
The Open Insights Hub aims to create an engaged, strategic, rigorous, collaborative and innovative environment through knowledge-sharing and interaction with internal and external experts, assumption testing, exchanging experience and facilitating innovative ideas, as well as soliciting and welcoming input in new ways from a variety of stakeholders. Accordingly, the Fellow would be expected to build networks within GAC, the Government of Canada and with external experts. A particular emphasis will be placed on identifying and engaging new sets of stakeholders whose good ideas can be leveraged.
Candidates are expected to work in presence at Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa.
Positions to be filled: 1 or 2, funding for a second Fellow to be confirmed
Positions to be filled: 1
For further information including eligibility and application requirements, please visit the GC Jobs posting for the 2024-2025 Cadieux-Léger Fellowship.
Global Affairs Canada (GAC), in collaboration with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), is pleased to announce the seventh edition of the International Policy Ideas Challenge. The objective of the program is to draw on the network of talented Canadian graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and early-career civil society researchers to identify concrete, innovative solutions to emerging international policy challenges faced by Canada.
The program offers applicants a chance to test their skills at translating academic expertise into policy language and insights. Applicants are invited to submit brief proposals. GAC will select between 5 and 10 winning proposals and provide coaching to researchers as part of further developing their proposals into full policy briefs. Winners will present their briefs to Government of Canada officials as part of the virtual Ideas Symposium, taking place in late 2024.
Call for proposals launch: June 14, 2024
Application deadline: July 15, 2024
Assessment of applications: July – August 2024
Selection of the 5 to 10 winning entries: August 2024
GAC and SSHRC announce winners: August 2024
Four coaching sessions (roughly 3 days in total; see “Coaching,” above): August-October 2024
Policy briefs due: Exact date TBD
Virtual Ideas Symposium to present final research products to Government of Canada officials at GAC: November or December 2024
Description: Humanitarian agencies have long tackled questions of food (in)security. In doing so, they have largely contributed to contemporary conceptions of the causes and remedies of famines, to the making of a vocabulary around food security, and to the construction and the dissemination of the main representations of famine. This panel explores practices of famine relief at the village/micro level on three continents, by international and local agents. Furthermore, it discusses the convergence and divergence of ideas between humanitarian workers, about governance of food production and delivery, about healthcare and debility, and about climate and nature. The panel will compare how they leveraged these assumptions to accomplish their missions in four different micro-contexts.
Panelists:
David Webster, Historian, Bishop’s University and Rogerio Savio Ma’averu, independent researcher, Timor-Leste, Famine, Aid and Strategies For Resilience In Timor-Leste Villages, 1975-79
Nassisse Solomon, Western University, “Village-to-Village”: Micro-initiatives with large-scale impact in Canadian Engagements with The Ethiopian Famine of 1984-88.
Sonya de Laat, Research Associate, McMaster University, Dearth and Detail: Re-viewing Historical Images for Great Understanding of Causes and Responses to Food Security Crises
Machia Désiré, Enseignant permanent d’histoire-géographie-Education à la Citoyenneté et à la Morale, CES DE NKASSOMO /MINESEC, La diplomatie humanitaire suisse en Afrique centrale : dimensions locales, rétrospective et prospective
The Annual meeting of the CNHH will take place 18 June 2024 from 12:00-1:30pm. Join in person or online. In-person location: ARMST 255.
Maximilian Klose has a new monograph on the history of the organization CARE and its work in postwar Germany. Here is the link to the website: https://biblioscout.net/book/10.25162/9783515136563. It is an open access publication, so anyone can download it for free.
Why They Gave (cover) by Maximillian Klose
Synopsis:
Maximilian Kloses’ first book, Why They Gave: CARE and American Aid for Germany after 1945,appeared in the Transatlantic Historical Studies series of the German publishing house Franz Steiner in June 2024. Focusing on the US organization CARE, the study investigates why Americans were more likely to give humanitarian aid to their recently defeated enemies than to their allies or to the victims of Nazi aggression. Embedding a diverse selection of case studies in the social, cultural, and political debates of the early postwar era, the study finds that these acts of giving were much more than altruistic deeds. In fact, donors used humanitarianism for their own purposes. Some gave to people who reflected their own worldview and sense of importance, or who could strategically advance their power on either side of the Atlantic. Others supported causes they considered essential to the progress of German-American relations in the early Cold War. In all cases, humanitarianism was at least as much about the donor as it was about the recipient.
The article “Molding Heritage Through Humanitarian Aid: German-Americans, Nazism, and Debates on Postwar German Suffering and Guilt” (Journal of Contemporary History, May 2024) investigates how US-Americans of German ancestry used humanitarian aid to Germany after World War II to deliberate their individual notions of heritage amidst the recent violent past of the land of origin. It looks at the rhetoric used by the leaders of German-American heritage organizations and both ethnic and non-ethnic humanitarian agencies. The article finds that these groups employed debates on German postwar suffering and the idea of the Germans being Hitler’s ‘first victims’ to circumvent any accusation of potential German public complicity. They did so not because their German origin subjected immigrants to much public hostility in the United States the way it had during the First World War, but rather because the Nazi atrocities threatened to taint their understandings of Germanness and heritage. By portraying fascism as an outside force that was not inherently German but that had preyed on Germanness from the outside, immigrants could resort to humanitarian aid as a means of rehabilitation that did not support the perpetrators but the victims of World War II.
CNHH members Sonya de Laat, Nassisse Solomon and Dominique Marshall have been awarded the CHA Collaboration Fund for 2024-2025 with colleagues Arsenii Alenichev, postdoctoral fellow at ITB Belgium, and Valérie Gorin from the Geneva Centre for Humanitarian Studies. Their project is to mount an exhibition aimed at engaging a wider public with important information on the historical sources generative AI tools learn from. Building on previous scholarship on histories of aid iconography (de Laat & Gorin) and their experience with exhibition curation, and scholarship on histories of international humanitarian aid (de Laat, Gorin, Solomon, Marshall), the exhibition includes exploration of the promise and pitfalls of generative AI and global health images that Alenichev has recently reported on. Virtual and physical exhibits will be displayed at collaborating institutions through early 2025.
From member Jonathon Zimmer, a PhD student in the Department of History at Queen’s University:
I am currently working to complete my field requirements, which will allow me to major in Canadian twentieth century history and minor in North American (Canada/U.S.) humanitarian history. As part of the program at Queen’s, the assessment for my minor field was to design a new course syllabus based on my many readings. I defended this syllabus last month, and I was hoping to perhaps share the news of my minor field topic. I have attached my mock syllabus which is the very first I have ever designed and perhaps one of the few that are dedicated specifically to humanitarian history! The mock course description is as follows:
“History 000/000 examines the relatively understudied history of humanitarianism in both the United States and Canada in the twentieth century. Topics for discussion include the relationship between philanthropy and nongovernment organizations (NGOs), the emergence of humanitarianism as a theory, the impact of humanitarianism and North American national aid agencies, the historical objectives associated with aid policy, distinctions between Canadian and American approaches to aid, how individuals can affect the aid-giving process, and how historical structures (primarily set in the Cold War) can help to inform our own understanding of giving aid today.”
From John W. Foster, Justice Studies, University of Regina:
One of the remarkable publications of the past year is Canada-Chile Solidarity: Testimonies of Civil Society Action, edited by Liisa L. North (Toronto, Novalis, 2023) 280 pp. Based on the extensive collection of church, labour, solidarity and personal documents compiled by the Latin America Working Group (LAWG) and located at York University. “Its pages offer gripping testimonies of the individuals and organizations that led solidarity” Details of the sustained advocacy which led to significant changes in Canadian refugee policy and the break down of resistance to refugees from the bloody 1973 coup d’etat against the government of President Salvador Allende. Included are voices from some of the refugees who came to settle in Canada and contribute to Canadian society.
Dominique Marshall is preparing an online MA seminar for the Fall of 2024 on the history of Disability, Capability and Debility in the history of Canada, which will include modules on humanitarian relief, war, maiming, humanitarian aid, and design. Graduate students of all disciplines are welcome.
Dominican Brother and missionary in Rwanda, Yvon Pomerleau, presented a collection of French African Graphic Novels to Carleton University’s Archives and Special Collections. Photo credit: Dominique Marshall
We have invited Pomerleau to join the annual meeting of the CNHH in Montreal.
IV. COMMON INITIATIVES FROM MEMBERS
Sarah Glassford, Dominique Marshall, Chris Trainor and David Webster wrote an article together entitled “Creating Development Archives ethically from an over-developed country: Promises and dilemmas of the Canadian Network of Humanitarian History (2013-2024), with the assistance of Eve Dutil. It was submitted this Spring 2024 to the Revue internationale des études du développement. The basis of this reflection was the roundtable the CNHH hosted in 2023 at Congress on archives of development.
V. BLOGS & TALKS PUBLISHED BY THE CNHH SINCE THE LAST BULLETIN (November 2023)
Contribute! If readers of the CNHH Bulletin would like to contribute to the “Essential Reads” series, or on any other subject relevant to our membership, please contact Sarah Glassford: Sarah.Glassford@uwindsor.ca . We would be thrilled to feature your reading recommendations, or your thoughts and experiences on other CNHH topics!
Dear colleagues of the CNHH, this will interest many of you.
All the best,
Dominique
Dr. Susan Armstrong-Reid wrote the CNHH in their capacity as Chair of the AAHN Research Grants Committee to ensure that the Network is updated on recent changes to AAHN research grants available to scholars of nursing, healthcare and humanitarianism at all stages of their careers. As a scholar researching the ethics of humanitarian nursing, Dr. Armstrong-Reid is particularly interested in forging transnational links to provide a more sophisticated and critical understanding of the development of the humanitarian system and continuing transformation required to meet even basic human security. The challenges only continue to grow, taxing the humanitarian system well beyond its current capacity to respond.
There are now three awards: H-15 Grant (an early career research grant for scholars who hold a research doctorate granted within the last 8 years); H-21Grant (for mid-to-senior scholars with a publication record); and the H-31 Pre-Doctoral Research Grant.
Please note: the deadline for submissions has been changed to May 1, 2024, and successful candidates will now be notified on July 1, 2024. The committee hopes that this later due date works better within the academic year for both faculty and students.
Moreover, the guidelines for the pre-doctoral research grant were extensively revised to provide a clearer picture of what the committee expected to be included and the consequent steps students should take prior to submitting their proposals. It was the committee’s belief that the new guidelines might be beneficial for students applying for larger research grants. A more detailed description of the eligibility criteria for all three grants and the guidelines for submitting a proposal in 2024 are available at: https://www.aahn.org/research-grants.
As one of its goals for 2023-24, the committee determined to reach out to our international colleagues to encourage them and their students to consider applying for these grants. We believe it is important to bring fresh transnational perspective and innovative methodologies that span disciplines to foster a more sophisticated critical understanding of how nursing’s past shaped its future direction in healthcare. The committee welcomes proposals that span historical time periods and a diverse range of topics.
In addition, AAHN also provides opportunities to publish articles based upon larger research projects in Nursing History Review or present papers at its 2024 Convention to be held September 19-21, 2024, in Milwaukee.
All the best for 2023-24 academic year and in in your own important and very salient research endeavours.
