To view the full profile of each member, click on their name.
Siobhan Airey
PhD candidate – International Law, University of Ottawa
Email: sairey@uottawa.ca
Website: http://sairey@acuitas.ca(personal)
Interests: The nature of the international legal framework governing official development assistance (IDCL – international law of development co-operation). Critical and post-colonial perspectives on international law. I am completing my doctorate in international law on the nature of the international legal framework governing official development assistance (IDCL – international law of development co-operation). My research draws from critical and post-colonial perspectives on international law. As part of my research, I aim to demonstrate how the contemporary legal framework on IDCL has its origins in the colonial era. I explore this through an examination of the EU’s legal aid architecture, and specifically in relation to the Cotonou Partnership Agreement.
Jennifer Anderson
Historian, Global Affairs Canada, Ottawa
Email: Jennifer.Anderson@international.gc.ca
Interests: I’m interested in archival and museum collections related to Canadian diplomacy and international history, and teaching with primary sources.
Caitlin Arbour
Graduate Student (Department of History, Carleton University)
Email: caitlinarbour@cmail.carleton.ca
Simplice Ayangma Bonoho
PhD History (University of Geneva and University of Yaoundé I), Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Bishop’s University for 2021-23
Email: simploofr@yahoo.fr
Research Interests: Canadian health care aid to francophone Africa. He is specifically interested in the history of health development policies implemented in Africa since the end of World War II. He summarized his work for the “Lightning Lecture in Environment, Health, and History” series at https://networks.h-net.org/lightning-lectures-environment-health-and-history-healthy-environment-prophylactic-measure-colonial.
Kwaku Ayisi
Master of Public Policy Candidate, Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Regina
Email: ayisi20k@uregina.ca
Peter Baltutis
Associate Professor, History and Religious Studies, St. Mary’s University
Email: peter.baltutis@stmu.ca
Bio: Dr. Peter Baltutis earned his Ph.D. in the History of Christianity/Theology from Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology in the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation was the first history of Development and Peace, the official international development orrganization of the Catholic Church in Canada and the Canadian member of Caritas Internationalis (a networrk of 162 national Catholic relief and development agencies working across the world). His research focuses on the historical and theological development of the Catholic social tradition in Canada and the role that faith-based NGOs play in international development and humanitarian aid. Currently, he is an associate professor of history and religious studies at St. Mary’s University in Calgary, where he also holds the Catholic Women’s League (CWL) Endowed Chair for Catholic Studies.
Stephanie Bangarth
Professor – History, Kings University College at Western University
Email: sbangar@uwo.ca
Website: http://www.kings.uwo.ca/academics/kings-faculty/faculty-biographies/stephanie-bangarth/
Interests: Human rights / Canadian Humanitarianism/ Publishing on Canada and Biafra shortly in a forthcoming collection
Eleanor Barney
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Carleton University
Interests: Eleanor Barney is participating in the History Practicum internship course. Her current research goal is to provide a report of the history of the Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) to the Communications Director, Zuzia Danielski, for use with the group’s 30th anniversary plans.
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik
S.J.D Harvard Law School (2008), Research Professor in Humanitarian Studies (PRIO), Associate Professor Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law (UiO).
Interests: Sandvik’s socio-legal research focus on accountability and humanitarian governance (legalization, rights-based approaches, GBV, innovation and technology). She also works on refugee resettlement (Uganda) and IDP legal mobilization (Colombia).
Oheneba Boateng
PhD Candidate, Free University of Berlin, Transnational Studies
Interests: Oheneba is currently writing his dissertation on humanitarian norms and actions by the African Union. Beyond this, his research interests include humanitarianism, international relations of the global South, Global Studies, and international organizations.
Tarah Brookfield
Professor – Wilfrid Laurier University, History and Youth & Children’s Studies
Email: tbrookfield@wlu.ca
Website: http://www.wlu.ca/homepage.php?grp_id=12103&f_id=37
Interests: How Canadian women have worked with and against the state to improve women’s rights, advocate for peace, and increase the safety of children and families endangered by militarization during the World Wars and Cold War
Kevin Brushett
Professor – History, Royal Military College
Email: Kevin.Brushett@rmc.ca
Website: http://www.rmc.ca/aca/his/per/index-eng.php
Interests: Canadian Cultural / Diplomatic history of Humanitarianism
Matthew Bunch
Independent Researcher, Founder – Freedom From Hunger Project
Email: mattjbunch@gmail.com
Website: http://freedomfromhungerproject.weebly.com/
Interests: Development of international humanitarianism in Canada and internationally since 1960. FAO’s Freedom From Hunger Campaign (FFHC), Canadian Hunger Foundation (CHF) and proliferation of NGOs as a result of FFHC and CHF. Narrative arc of international development movements and popular campaigns to raise awareness on the problem of hunger and poverty. I operate a voluntary research and outreach project designed to commemorate and further the goals of FFHC and to combat hunger and poverty.
Isabel Campbell
Historian at the Directorate of History and Heritage, National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa
Email: Isabel.Campbell@forces.gc.ca
Interests: International, Canadian history, military, naval history. I’m interested in how military history intersects with humanitarianism and negotiating the boundaries of public debate with respect to conflict and social well-being.
Jill Campbell-Miller
Adjunct professor of history, Saint Mary’s University
Email: jill.campbell-miller@smu.ca
Interests: Canadian foreign assistance / development/ aid/ India
Elise Carlson-Rainer
PhD candidate, University of Washington in Seattle.
Email: eacr@uw.edu
Interest: I am a former diplomat working on human rights in the U.S. Department of State and humanitarian assistance in the U.S. Agency for International Development
Christine Chisholm
PhD Candidate – History, Carleton University
Email: ChristineKrause@cmail.carleton.ca
Website: http://carleton.ca/history/people/christine-chisholm/
Interests: Christine’s focus is on the negative impact of the drug thalidomide on Ghana, which was marketed from the mid-1950s to late 1961 by the German company Grünenthal as medication to alleviate morning sickness in pregnant women.
Dominique Clément
Associate Professor – University of Alberta
Email: dominique.clement@ualberta.ca
About: Dominique Clément is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta and an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of History & Classics and Educational Policy Studies. He is the author of Canada’s Rights Revolution, Equality Deferred and Human Rights in Canada. He is also the co-editor for Alberta’s Human Rights Story and Debating Dissent. Clément has been a Visiting Scholar in Australia and the United Kingdom, and is the author of numerous articles on the history of human rights, social movements and women’s history. He has consulted for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and is currently on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Association for Canadian Studies, L’Institut d’études canadiennes de l’Université de l’Alberta, Centre for Constitutional Studies and the Canadian Committee on Women’s History. Clément manages an expansive website, www.HistoryOfRights.ca, which serves as a research and teaching portal on the history of human rights in Canada.
Ted Cogan
PhD, History, University of Guelph
Email: tcogan@uoguelph.ca
Website: http://www.triuhistory.ca/ted-cogan/
Interest: Natonal identity and popular perceptions of foreign aid in Canada since World War Two.
Ruth Compton Brouwer
Professor Emerita – History, Kings University College at Western University
Email: rbrouwer@uwo.ca
Website: http://www.kings.uwo.ca/academics/history/people/prof-ruth-compton-brouwer/
Interests: History of CUSO / Mission History / Humanitarianism and Gender
Peter Conrad
MfA candidate, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario
Email: peter.conrad@ryerson.ca
Interests: I’m currently an MFA candidate in the Documentary Media program in the Yeates School of Graduate Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto. For my main research, I’m pursuing a documentary project related to building collective memory among former Salvadoran refugees, forced into camps in Honduras during the civil war between 1980 and 1991. As a starting point, I’m exploring the archival photographs and refugee accounts gathered by Meyer Brownstone, Chair Emeritus of Oxfam Canada, during his visits to those refugee camps in the 1980s. Project completion will be Summer 2017.
Works: Find an early version of Peter’s current project here.
Lawrence Cumming
Former Director of Oxfam Canada and independent researcher
Email: cumminglawrence@gmail.com
Sonya de Laat
Research Coordinator, Humanitarian Health Ethics, McMaster University
Email: delaat@mcmaster.ca and sdelaat2@uwo.ca
Website: http://www.humanitarianhealthethics.net
Interests: Sonya de Laat is a scholar of visual culture related to humanitarian action, global health and international development. She is the Global Health graduate academic advisor and a sessional lecturer at McMaster University. She is also an investigator with the Humanitarian Health Ethics research group based at McMaster and McGill universities and an ardent promoter of the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History. She is interested in the role of visuals—particularly photography—in histories of moral and practical dimensions of aid. Her work pays special attention to visual histories of humanitarian health ethics, palliative care in refugee camps, and the decentering & decolonization of global health and Canadian international development. Recognizing limitations inherent in the photography, Dr. de Laat’s work explores the potential of photography to draw attention to ways in which we can secure a more equitable and compassionate world.
Alexandra Dellios
RA and Assistant Lecturer, University of Melbourne
Email: alexandra.dellios@unimelb.edu.au
Interests: Alexandra Dellios is an historian of migration and memory studies. She received her PhD in history from the University of Melbourne in March 2015. Her book on migrant settlement in postwar Australia, Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre, will be published in August 2017.
Audra Diptee
Professor – History, Carleton University
Email: audra.diptee@carleton.ca
Website: http://www.audradiptee.com
Interest: Global South – particularly Africa and the Caribbean
Marie Michèle Doucet
Email: marie.michele.doucet@gmail.com
Interests: PhD at the Université de Montréal. Work on French women’s humanitarian aid in Germany after the Great War. My work on this subject as been presented at the international conference Vivere la guerra. Pensare la pace (1914-1921). Le espierienze delle donne, il pensiero feminista e la relazioni internazionali in Venice, Italy, in November 2014 and will soon be published under the title “Helping the German Children : French Humanitarian Aid and Franco-German Reconciliation After the Great War (1919-1925)” in a collective book at Cambridge Scholar Publishing (2015).
Marie-Luise Ermisch
PhD Candidate – History, McGill University
Email: marie-luise.ermisch@mail.mcgill.ca
Website: https://www.mcgill.ca/history/graduate/phd/directory#Africa
Interests: British Red Cross, Christian Aid, Oxfam /Save the Children
John W. Foster
Professor – Sociology, Carleton University / Former Director Oxfam Canada ; Participant observer of Canadian-based international development NGOs; participant observer of Canadian organizations dealing with international human rights and the UN system; participant observer of international solidarity movements focused particularly on Latin America. I am currently teaching (distance education) in International Studies and Justice Studies at the University of Regina, while based in Ottawa.
Email: john491@sympatico.ca
Interests: Globalization and Human Rights / Religion and Humanitarianism. Collaborator with researchers in Halifax, Fredericton, Toronto and Ottawa in a collective history of the thirty year experience of the Latin American Working Group (1966-96), based in Toronto.
Sanjukta Ghosh
Post doctoral fellow, SOAS, London
Email: sanjukta36@hotmail.com
Interests: Humanitarian aid in India, post-famine conditions and the post-partition decade in Bengal (India) 1945-59, documents related to politics of relief and distribution of food supplies.
Brooke Gibbons
Project Officer at CARE Canada
Email: brooke.gibbons@care.ca
Website: http://care.ca/
Interests: Coordinator of PAGER, the Policy Action Group for Emergency Response, a 32 member agency which includes all major operational humanitarian organisations with Canada.
John Gilinsky
Independent Scholar
Email: johngilinsky@yahoo.ca
Interests: John is interested in many aspects of this broad field: social medical history, history of the welfare state, history of veterans, history of disabilities, history of war trauma, histories of war philanthropies and war charities, history of war crimes, history of cultural property protections in armed conflicts, history of international humanitarian laws applicable in maritime armed conflicts, etc. He focuses on Canada and World War I, but also has deep interests in the war generally including neutrals. John can readily assist with imagery, iconographical issues, archival sources, administrative and institutional histories. One of his previous dbs includes all the officially recognized WWII Canadian war charities (1938-1950). He is currently researching a history of a local war veterans health care facility in Toronto, founded and operated by the Toronto Branch of the Canadian Red Cross Society.
Kim Girouard
Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for International Studies (CÉRIUM), affiliated with the Center of Asian Studies (CÉTASE) – University of Montréal
Lecturer, Department of History, University of Montreal.
Email: kim.girouard@umontreal.ca
Interests: History of Medicine and Health in China, with a focus on Missionary Medicine; Mother and Infant Health; Women, Gender, and Western Medicine.
Sarah Glassford
Archivist, Leddy Library Archives & Special Collections, University of Windsor
Email: Sarah.Glassford@uwindsor.ca
Website: https://uwindsor.cacademia.edu/SarahGlassford
Interests: Dr. Glassford is an archivist-historian with an active research and service profile in both fields. Her research interests focus on the intertwined histories of women, children, wartime, health, and volunteer organizations — all of which feature in her book Mobilizing Mercy: A History of the Canadian Red Cross, and many of them in her broader work on women, children, and war. Since 2018 she has facilitated the donation of Canadian Red Cross-related artifacts and archival collections to libraries, archives, and museums across Canada and in Switzerland. She is happy to offer advice and support to any aid organizations interested in preserving documents, images, and artifacts from their past.
Valérie Gorin
Universities of Geneva and Lausanne (Switzerland).
Interests: An historian and media scholar with a strong interest in the visual culture of humanitarian action and photography in particular. Areas of research are related to the history of communication and humanitarian action and to the evolution and uses of photojournalism in modern times. She has been conducting research on the history and media coverage of famines, and on the link between citizen photojournalism, (eye)witnessing and advocacy strategies in humanitarian settings. She is currently working on a research project related to the shift between amateur to professional imagery among relief agencies (1860s-1960s) and their activist use of images.
Rhonda Gossen
Rhonda Gossen is a former Canadian diplomat and Canadian International Development Agency manager and consultant to the United Nations Development Program. She is the author of, The Twelfth of February: Canadian Aid for Gender Equality during the Rise of Violent Extremism in Pakistan, from McGill Queens University Press (September 2024).
Website: https://www.mqup.ca/the-twelfth-of-february-products-9780228022527.php?page_id=73&
Topics of Interest: Foreign aid/diplomatic cooperation; Humanitarian response and humanitarian-development-peace nexus; Gender equality, women’s rights; Preventing violent extremism.
Interests and Research: Rhonda Gossen is a senior consultant with the UNDP Crisis Response Unit. A former career CIDA professional and Canadian diplomat posted throughout Asia and Africa, Rhonda now works on early recovery and resilience within humanitarian response and post crisis recovery. In 2014, She was assigned with UNHCR in Lebanon on the Syrian refugee crisis, in 2015 in Nepal with UNDP post-earthquake and in 2016 in Nigeria, South Sudan and Southern Africa with UNDP. Between 2010-2013, she was Head of Cooperation in Pakistan. She was affiliated with the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC previously heading a conflict and development program and a visiting fellow in residence jointly with Green College at UBC.
Susan Gunter-Jacobs
Sociology Student, Carleton University
Email: susanjacobs@cmail.carleton.ca
Interests and Research: Immigration/refugees issues, politics, policies, human rights, injustice and human rights violations, poverty issues, and social concerns.
Ryan Heyden
PhD Candidate, Department of History, McMaster University
Email: heydenrw@mcmaster.ca
Interests and Research: Ryan Heyden’s dissertation titled “The German Red Cross and Humanitarianism in Divided Germany, 1945-1989,” focusses on the German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, DRK) in both East and West Germany after 1945. He examines how the German Red Cross in the East and West challenge historians’ understandings of divided Germany’s postwar reconstruction and development from the occupation period to the peaceful revolution. This project examines themes of humanitarianism after genocide, the relationship between East and West Germans, and the role of the two Germanys in the postwar world. Here he deals with several important issues: the confrontation with the Nazi past, Germany’s development and re-evaluation of socialism and liberal democracy in the 1960s through organs like the Jugendrotkreuz (Youth Red Cross), the relationships the DRKs forged beyond Europe, and the organization’s role in facilitating relations across the Berlin Wall. He won the Ezzo Cappadocia Prize in European History from his university for his Master’s research and is currently funded by the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, McMaster University, and holds a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD; 2018 Language Fellowship). He is also participating at the Global Humanitarianism Research Academy in July 2018.
Joseph Morgan Hodge
Assistant Professor – History, West Virginia University
Email: joseph.hodge@mail.wvu.edu
Website: http://history.wvu.edu/faculty/current-faculty/joseph-hodge
Interests: I am interested in the history of international development and its relationship with European colonial empires, especially British colonial development policies and practices in the twentieth century. I have written on the role of experts and expertise in the history British colonial development and its legacies: Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Ohio UP, 2007). I have also co-edited two related collections: (with Brett Bennett), Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire, 1800-1970 (2011); and (with Gerald Hodl and Martine Kopf), Developing Africa: Concepts and Practices in twentieth-century colonialism (2014).
Hans-Martin Jaeger
Associate Professor – Political Science, Carleton University
Email: hansmartin.jaeger@carleton.ca
Website: http://carleton.ca/polisci/people/jaeger-hans-martin/
Interests: International Government / Global Civil Society
Andrew Johnston
Associate Professor, Department of History, Carleton University
Email: andrew.johnston@carleton.ca
Website: http://www.carleton.ca/history/people/andrew-m-johnston/
Interest: United States history in a global context; transnational histories of the social sciences, political economy, and liberalism; Pragmatism, feminism, pacifism, and social theory; humanitarian intervention and human rights in feminist internationalism.
Amy Kaler
Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta
Email: akaler@ualberta.ca
Interests: I’m a sociology professor at the University of Alberta who has applied for a SSHRC Insight grant to delve into the history of WCM and the activities of its Canadian missionaries on their return to Canada during eh second world war. I’m currently the holder of an Insight titled “Narratives of International Faith-Based Humanitarianism,” for which I and two colleagues have interviewed over 60 people from the global north who identify as Christians engaged in emergency relief and development work in Africa. I’m very interested in the history of Canadian engagement with the global south, whether in the service of faith commitments or as a secular, rights-based endeavour. (For what it’s worth, I’m also former WUSC co-operant).
Helen Kennedy
PhD Candidate, Carleton University
Email: helen.kennedy@carleton.ca
Website: https://carleton.ca/history/people/helen-kennedy/
Interests and Research: Helen Kennedy is a PhD candidate studying international intervention and humanitarian action in Bosnia. Her research is focused on how international institutions describe people affected by conflict and what that discourse can tell us about policy decisions. She is the lead researcher on the Mitacs-funded project “Micro-Histories of Transnational Humanitarian Aid: Co-Creation of Knowledge, Policy, and Education Materials.” Helen is also a member of the Global Institute for Research Education and Scholarship and part of the Disaster Lab research team at Carleton.
Maximilian Klose
BA History, MA North American Studies
PhD Candidate, Graduate School of North American Studies, Free University Berlin
Email: klose@gsnas.fu-berlin.de
Website: http://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/en/graduateschool/docs_postdocs/doctoralstudents/2017/Klose/index.html
Interests: My research focuses on NGO CARE and aid programs to Germany from 1946 to the early 1960s. In light of the tremendous success of CARE’s aid efforts to Germany soon after WWII, I investigate donor motivations to reveal why Americans felt compelled to provide humanitarian assistance to the recently defeated enemy. For this purpose, I analyze postwar American public discourse on German guilt and rehabilitation, US responsibility as a new global hegemon, and domestic cultural values that might have contributed to CARE’s appeal.
Anna Kozlova
PhD Candidate, Department of History, Carleton University
Interests: Anna Kozlova is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She holds a BA in Communication Studies with a Minor in Law from Carleton University and an MA in World Heritage Studies from the Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus, Germany. Her research interests are focused on 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),” which you can read about here.
Tino Kreutzer
PhD in Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfred Laurier University
Email: contact@tinokreutzer.org
Website: linkedin.com/in/tinokreutzer
Interests: Structural and political challenges hampering the effective delivery of humanitarian aid to victims of disaster relief. Making humanitarian aid governance more effective in light of evident challenges and political friction around humanitarian aid.
Kreutzer recently co-authored”Two Solitudes: how closed health networks facilitated the spread of Ebola in West Africa’s fragile states;” “Peacebuilding and Reconstruction Polls in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo;” and “Surgical Non-Governmental Organizations: Global Surgery’s Unknown Nonprofit Sector.”
Stephanie Leclair
Senior Communications Officer – WUSC
Email: sleclair@wusc.ca
Website: http://wusc.ca
Claire Lefort-Rieu
PhD Candidate, Centre Population et Développement (Ceped)
Email: clairem.lefort@hotmail.fr
Bio: Claire Lefort-Rieu is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the Centre Population et Développement (Ceped) in Paris. For several years, she worked for international NGOs providing assistance to forced displaced people in Middle East and Africa. Thanks to her professional and academic experience, she practices a methodology of “networked double ethnography” with both aid actors and their so-called “beneficiaries”. After working on religious “minorities” among the Iraqi refugees, she now studies forced migration governance in Cameroon.
Tina Loo
Professor – History, University of British Columbia
Email: tinaloo@mail.ubc.ca
Website: http://www.history.ubc.ca/people/tina-loo
Interests: Forced relocation, community / regional development
Patricia Lopez
Assistant Professor– Dartmouth College, Department of Geography
Email: Patricia.J.Lopez@dartmouth.edu
Interests: My work examines the ways in which ideas of “care” are mobilized through [militarized] humanitarianism and their impacts on disease, health outcomes, and citizenship.
Jim MacKinnon
Manager – Program Development Unit, Oxfam Canada
Email: jimmac@oxfam.ca
Website: http://oxfam.ca
Interest: Understanding humanitarian history allows us to make more informed humanitarian choices today.
Laura Madokoro
Associate Professor – History, Carleton University
Email: laura.madokoro@carleton.ca
Website: https://carleton.ca/history/people/laura-madokoro/
Interest: Relationship between humanitarian aid and refugee movements.
Maureen Mahoney
Recent graduate – History, Carleton University
Email: maureenanne.mahoney@gmail.com
Interests: Urban transnationalism, pacifism, gender, and internationalism.
Zehra Mawani
Archivist – Library and Archives Canada
Email: zehra.mawani@bac-lac.gc.ca
Interest: Social justice portfolio at LAC.
Nicole Marion
PhD – History, Carleton University
Email: nicolemarion@cmail.carleton.ca
Website: http://carleton.ca/history/people/nicole-marion/
Interests: Canadian Peace Movement / Gender / Humanitarianism
Dominique Marshall
Professor – History, Carleton University
Email: dominique.marshall@carleton.ca
Website: https://domarsha.wordpress.com/
Interests: History of Oxfam / Children’s Rights/Save the Children International, League of Nations
Jody Mason
Associate Professor, Department of English, Carleton University
Email: jody.mason@carleton.ca
Research and Interests: Dr. Mason is the author of two books, Writing Unemployment: Worklessness, Mobility, Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literatures (UTP, 2013) and Home Feelings: Liberal Citizenship and the Canadian Reading Camp Movement (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019). She is currently working on a SSHRC-funded project that examines how Canadian practices of “book development”—the deployment of books as tools of international development––have been shaped in the past sixty years by the antinomies of settler colonialism and the shifting meanings of the book within late capitalism.
Hunter McGill
School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa
Rachel McNally
PhD Student, Carleton University
Email: rachelmcnally@cmail.carleton.ca
Interest: History of refugee policy
Katie-Marie McNeill
PhD Student, Department of History, Queen’s University
Email: mcneill.katiemarie@queensu.ca
Interests: Katie-Marie’s research explores prisoner aid societies, including Canadian organizations such as Elizabeth Fry Societies and John Howard Societies, through a transnational lens. She is interested in interactions between these types of aid organizations across national borders and plans to compare prisoner aid work in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States in the mid 20th century.
David Meinen
PhD in Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo
Email: dmeinen@uwaterloo.ca
Website: http://davidmeinen.wordpress.com
Interests: Humanitarianism in Haiti, humanitarian transformations over the 19th and 20th centuries, and the inscription of security discourse into the work of contemporary NGOs/humanitarians.
David Meren
Université de Montréal, département d’histoire
Email: david.meren@umontreal.ca
Interests: The history of Canadian participation in international development assistance is impossible to understand without engaging with the history and contemporary reality of Indigenous/settler encounters in Canada. Conversely, it is impossible to understand the evolution of Canada’s ‘Indian policy’ and Indigenous activism without taking into account aid-fuelled links between Canada and the Global South. As the Canadian state participated in post-1945 development efforts in a bid promote the global expansion of a liberal capitalist order amid a backdrop of decolonization and the Cold War, it drew upon lessons learned from settler colonialism at home. Moreover, the transnational discourse and ideas of ‘development’ reached into the very heart of Canada’s settler order, informing how the Canadian state engaged with Indigenous peoples as it expanded the liberal order and a new wave of internal colonization within Canada’s borders. Although Indigenous individuals and peoples were affected by and participated in these dynamics, they were also able to appropriate the discourse of development in a bid to contest settler colonial logics. Exploring these ideas with the assistance of a “functional” methodology, I am working on a monograph that explores the principal fields in which Canadian official development assistance was especially prominent in the decades following the Second World War as a means to seeing how and where the “lessons learned” from settler colonialism were exported abroad, and understanding how the logics and objectives underpinning Canadian aid efforts abroad were also evident at home.
Dr. Meren’s monograph, With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms and the Canada-Québec-France Triangle, 1944-1970 (UBC Press, 2012), examined the complex three-way dynamic between Canada, Quebec and France, in the broader context of globalization. This book was part of his efforts to shed light on the question of empires in Canadian and Quebec international history. This research also led Dr. Meren to explore the concept of “nationhood” in an increasingly globalized world and, hence, the efforts to manage the many overlapping identities it encompasses.
Anthony Michel
Department of Canadian Heritage
Email: anthonypmichel@gmail.com
Interests: International development, human rights and refugee policy
Seraphina Cha Mikyung
PhD Candidate
Email: jelee0801@gmail.com
About: Cha (Seraphina) has worked for 30 years with movements at the regional and international levels as social activist and NGO consultant. As a PhD Candidate, Cha conducts research about International Cooperation on Aid and the future of Open Digital Archives. Cha also does work on labors, human rights, and international migration.
Michael Molloy
Adjunct Professor, University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
Email: joandmikeca@yahoo.com
About:
Mike Molloy has 40 years’ experience in international and refugee affairs. He was Ambassador to Jordan (1996-2000) and Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (2000-03). As Director Refugee Policy, 1976 -1978, he led design of the refugee provisions of the 1976 Immigration Act including the Convention Refugee and Designated Classes, the private refugee sponsorship program and the WUSC refugee student program. He coordinated the 1979-80 Indochinese refugee program that brought 60,000 refugees to Canada and was directly involved in the Czechoslovakian (1968) and Uganda Asian (1972) refugee movements. He was Counselor for Humanitarian Affairs at the Canadian Mission in Geneva 1981-84, and managed immigration and refugee operations in Jordan, Syria, East Africa and Ontario. He is President of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society (cihs-shic.ca). Recent publications include Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugee Movement 1975-80 (McGill Queens University Press), and three volumes on the Jerusalem Old City Initiative – Track Two Diplomacy and Jerusalem, Governance and Security in Jerusalem, and Contested Sites in Jerusalem(Routledge).
Shezan Muhammedi
PhD Candidate in History/Migration and Ethnic Relations at Western University
Email: smuhamme@uwo.ca
Interests: Resettlement of Ugandan Asian refugees in Canada between 1972 and 1974, using archival research and oral histories to capture the experiences of refugees who have transitioned into becoming active Canadian citizens.
Leighann Neilson
Associate professor – Carleton University
Email: leighann.neilson@carleton.ca
Website: http://sprott.carleton.ca/directory/neilson-leighann/
Interests: History of marketing in not-for-profit institutions including NGOs and humanitarian aid organizations. Previous research has examined the nature of charitable donations and fundraising strategies in Canada, along with examining advertising strategies used by Plan Canada to recruit foster parents.
Andrew Nurse
Associate Professor and Director of Canadian Studies — Mount Allison University, New Brunswick
Email: anurse@mta.ca
Stephen Emmanuel Osei-Owusu
Email: stephenoseiowusu@cmail.carleton.ca; stephenosei-owusu@ucc.edu.gh
Stephen Osei-Owusu, is an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of History, University of Cape Coast (U.C.C.), Ghana. In 2009, he was appointed a Senior Research Assistant at the Department of History, U.C.C. and in 2015, promoted to the position of a Principal Research Assistant at the same department. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts and a M. Phil (History) Degree from the University of Cape Coast. His research interests are development related issues such as foreign aid and the role of the environment in national development. His recent research focus is on the evolution of environmental protection regulations/legislations in Ghana.
Kevin O’Sullivan
Professor – Department of History, National University Ireland – Galway
Email: kevin.k.osullivan@nuigalway.ie
Website: https://www.nuigalway.ie/our-research/people/history-and-philosophy/kevinkosullivan/
Research Interests and Bio: My main research and teaching interests are in international history, especially the areas of globalisation, humanitarianism, and NGOs. My second book, The NGO Moment: The Globalisation of Compassion from Biafra to Live Aid (Cambridge University Press, 2021) examines how and why (and with what consequences) NGOs became the primary conduits for Western compassion towards the Global South. I have also worked on several collaborative projects with colleagues from the aid sector and published numerous articles and essays on the broad history of global compassion, including co-edited special issues of European Review of History (with Matthew Hilton, 2016) and Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements (with Enrico Dal Lago, 2017). My first book, Ireland, Africa and the End of Empire: Small State Identity in the Cold War, 1955-75, was published by Manchester University Press in 2012, and re-issued in paperback in 2014.
Andrea Paras
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Guelph
Email: aparas@uoguelph.ca
Research: The aim of my current research (funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant) is to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canadian development and humanitarian NGOS. My book Moral Obligations and Sovereignty in International Relations: A Genealogy of Humanitarianism (Routledge, 2019) investigates the history of humanitarianism in relation to the principle of sovereignty from the 16th century to the present. I’ve also published on faith-based NGOs within the Canadian development sector.
Jason Phillips
Independent Consultant and Researcher; Adjunct Research Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University.
Email: phillipsjason185@yahoo.com
Interests and Bio: Jason teaches courses on the Politics of Forced Displacement and Complex Humanitarian Emergencies. He is currently engaged in a series of research studies examining how humanitarian ethics are understood and operationalized in the aid sector. Jason is currently a member of the Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative’s (HQAI) General Assembly and previously served on the Board of InsideNGO (now Humentum). He holds a Ph.D. in political science from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. His dissertation, “International Norms, American Foreign Policy, and African Famine,” compared US responses to crises in Nigeria/Biafra, Ethiopia, and Somalia to understand the conditions under which norm entrepreneurs are able to influence state humanitarian policy.
Andrée-Anne Plourde
PhD Candidate – History, University of Laval
Email: andree-anne.plourde.2@ulaval.ca
Interests: History of youth Red Cross, during the years 1914-1945, in a comparative perspective (North America, South America and Europe).
William Plowright
Lecturer-Peace and Conflict Studies, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University
Email: william.plowright@durham.ac.uk
Interests: William Plowright is a political scientist (Lecturer – Peace & Conflict Studies, Durham University), researching the dynamics of armed conflict and humanitarian assistance. He is also a humanitarian aid worker with ~10 years’ experience (including in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, DRC, CAR, and others). He is the author of Armed Groups and Legitimacy: Child Soldiers in Intrastate Conflicts (Routledge, 2021) and The War on Rescue: The Obstruction of Humanitarian Assistance in the European Migration Crisis (forthcoming).
John D. Pringle
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Twitter: @johndpringle_
Website: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/johndpringle
Interests: John Pringle is a nurse and epidemiologist with a PhD in public health and bioethics. He has done five missions with MSF and served four years as Vice Chair of the MSF Ethics Review Board. His program of research is humanitarian and global health ethics. He is a member of the Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Group faculty in the Global Ethics Education Initiative, and is currently working for MSF in Myanmar in humanitarian affairs and emergency Covid-19 response.
Paloma Raggo
Professor – Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, Carleton University
Email: Paloma.Raggo@carleton.ca
Website: http://www.carleton.ca/sppa/people/raggo-paloma/
Interests: Accountability of private transnational entities with an emphasis on transnational NGOs/nonprofits. NGO governance issues, Nonprofit leadership, transnational activism, private-private governance systems as well as qualitative and mixed-methodologies.
Elizabeth Reid
Honours Undergraduate student, Carleton University, Ottawa
Email: elizabethmreid@cmail.carleton.ca
Interests: To this point in Elizabeth’s research, she has taken an interest in social and cultural history in Canada and the U.S., and the ways these histories shape and are shaped by humanitarian aid both domestically and internationally.
Jeremy Rich
Associate Professor, Marywood University, Scranton, Pennsylvania
Email: jrich@marywood.edu
Interests: Dr. Rich is currently working on a book project of US and Canadian members of the Mennonite Central Committee’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is also beginning another book project on the Congolese Red Cross, 1960-present.
Chris W.J. Roberts
PhD ABD, University of Calgary; Instructor, Political Science, University of Calgary
Email: cwrobert@ualberta.ca
Website: cwjroberts.com
Interests: Chris Roberts is president of African Access Consulting and Director and VP of the Canadian Council on Africa. He has an interest in comparative politics specializing in African Politics and Development as well as an interest in International Relations, specializing in Canadian foreign and defense policy in general, and foreign intervention in Africa. For a more detailed biography, please visit Roberts’ website. For Roberts’ bibliography, please see the CNHH Collective Bibliography or else visit Roberts’ website for a more comprehensive bibliographic listing.
Beth Robertson
Carleton University
Email: bethrobertson@cmail.carleton.ca
Website: bethrobertson33.wordpress.com
Interests: Trained as a gender and sexuality historian, Beth Robertson specializes in the history of marginal science, medicine and technology. Her current undertaking is a history of technology and persons who are blind or partially sighted from a transnational perspective. This endevour seeks to collect archival and oral histories from the Canadian National Institute of the Blind and other international NGOs. Her book, entitled Possessed by Science: Gender, Embodiment and Psychichal Research, 1918-1940 is anticipated to be released in the Fall of 2016. Other interests include the history of surveillance, computing, madness studies and the digital humanities. She is one of the co-editors of ActiveHistory.ca.
Francisco Rubio
Webster University, Geneva
Email: friscorubi@yahoo.fr
Interests: NGOs and humanitarian action. Attempting now to protect the archives of french humanitarian NGOs with the goal to write an history of French NGOs and the “Sans-Frontierisme.” Worked for 20 years as Head of Legal Dpt of Médecins du monde France and wrote several French language books about humanitarianism. Currently, retired from Médecins du monde and teaching at Webster University in Geneva (CH). Also working on philanthropy and the World War I. With french friends we try to set up a protection of archives of french NGOs in the field of the “sans frontièrisme”.
Rachel Sandwell
Faculty Lecturer – McGill University – History and Women’s and Gender Studies
Interests: Dr. Sandwell’s first book looked at South African women’s exile politics, examining the work of women activists when the major South African resistance movements were based outside South Africa, in other African countries. This led to her current research on NGO, including Canadian NGO, relationships with African liberation movements in the 1960s-1980s. She is exploring how NGOs balanced support for the ambitions of liberation organizations with unease over the military aspect of these movements, and how the movements, NGOs, and African states hosting the liberation movements navigated the differences and overlaps between refugees and political exiles.
Rebecca Schein
Professor – Human Rights, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, Carleton University
Email: Rebecca_Schein@carleton.ca
Interests: Social movements and political strategy; communities, citizens, and publics; public goods, commodification, and decommodification; radical political economy; “global citizenship” and solidarity movements; the U.S. Peace Corps; “culture shock” and aid work.
Cyrus Sundar Singh
MFA Documentary Media, Ryerson University; PhD Candidate, Joint Communications and Cultures, Ryerson/York University, Toronto, Canada; Filmmaker
Email: cyrusmedia@pathcom.com
Interests: Cyrus has written, produced and directed in a range of genres including documentary, reality, food, and lifestyle. He continues to develop a new form of documentary he’s calling Performing the Documentary—site-specific live-documentaries in the presence of the audience—and premiered two the genre-bending new form documentaries back to back at the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival: Brothers In The Kitchen in 2016, and Africville in Black and White in 2017.
Cyrus continually engages in community engagement and volunteers his time on a variety of boards and projects across the campus and across the city. He is the President Regent Park Focus, Toronto; a member of the Toronto Film and Media Seminar; he is co-president of the Joint Communications and Culture Graduate Student’s Association; president of Collective Camera; and a member of the Artist Advisory Committee for Hot Docs International Canadian Documentary Festival.
Examples of work: The Conflicted Samaritan
Nassisse Solomon
PhD in History, Western University
Email: Nassisse@gmail.com
Interests: The history and nature of Humanitarian aid fundamentally shapes the narrative of Ethiopian history in the latter half of the twentieth century. The study of humanitarian aid is inherently transnational and is reflective of national and global, economic and social developments. I am interested in the dichotomies that are presented in the narrative(s) of benevolence and beneficiaries, benefactors and recipients. Humanitarian aid embodies a humanistic ethos, at the same time as it is situated in a complex geo-political and cultural world order.
Therese Marie Sunga
PhD Candidate – History, University of Manchester
Email: theresemarie.sunga@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Interests: Therese Marie researches the Philippines as a site of asylum in the 20th century.
Will Tait
Interests: History of missions / NGOs / Cold War Aid
Lynne Taylor
Faculty Member, Department of History, University of Waterloo
Email: ltaylor@uwaterloo.ca
Biographical Note and Interests: Lynne Taylor is a historian of twentieth-century Europe and works on state-society relations in the context of war. For the past two decades, her research has focused on the displaced persons crisis in American-occupied Germany, and specifically on the plight of what were called ‘unaccompanied children’ – children either orphaned or separated from their parents by the war. This work has resulted in a total of three books on various aspects of this particular part of the greater crisis.
Michela Telatin
PhD International Relations (Westminster University), MSc Development Administration and Planning (University of Bristol)
Email: mtelatin@yahoo.com
Biographical Note and Interests: Michela Telatin holds a PhD in International Relations from Westminster University in London, UK and is a seasoned humanitarian manager. Her research interest include management of humanitarian issues by humanitarian and political actors, the link between development and security, and Security Sector Reform. Dr. Telatin has taught extensively in the UK, Switzerland, and Italy. Her publications include: The Development-Security Nexus and Security Sector Reform (2014), The Development-Security Nexus Policies in Afghanistan (Croation International Relations Review, 2010), EU SSR in Guinea Bissau (Portuguese Journal of International Affairs, 2009).
Sara Thaw
Communications Officer at Oxfam Canada
Email: Sara.Thaw@Oxfam.org
Interests: Currently collaborating with the CNHH on “Global Impact: a Canadian Story.”
Bob Thomson
Email: bthomson@web.ca
Bio: An Ottawa-based researcher, consultant, whistle blower, resource and staff person for Canadian & international NGOs and government. CUSO volunteer in Peru (1968-70), CIDA Latin America Programme Officer (1972-74), CUSO staff (1974-80), Caribbean representative of CUSO (1976 to 1979), his 1983 Carleton thesis covered “The Potential & Limits of Agricultural Self-Reliance in Grenada”. Founder and Managing Director of Fairtrade Canada (1994-2000), Canadian affiliate of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, promoting a fair trade label for coffee and other products. Facilitator of Export Credit Agency Watch, Paris (2004-2008). An organizer of the 2014 Ottawa Peoples Social Forum, he has a degree in Civil Engineering from UofT (1968) and an MA in International Affairs from Carleton (1983). Bob grew up in Thunder Bay and has lived and worked in Peru, the Caribbean, France, and Canada, with extensive experience with NGO programme and project evaluations, fair trade producer support, nonprofit governance, housing co-operatives, and computer assisted communications for civil society. Currently “retired” he manages a blog on what a post growth world might look like. Whistle blower: see http://tinyurl.com/Chile-CJFE Link to various writings.
Shirley Tillotson
Professor, History, Dalhousie University
Email: stillots@dal.ca
Interests: Modern Canadian history, Socio-political history, Taxation history, Gender and women’s history, Canadian history. A point of connection between my current research and humanitarian aid is that arguments about excessive federal taxation in the 1950s and early 1960s frequently refer to federal govt spending on international aid as a prime example of unjustified spending. Though I’m not likely to pursue the interpretation of that fact myself, I’ll be interested to see what develops around this question of Canadians’ conception of their international obligations.
Brian Tomlinson
Adjunct Professor – IDS and Research Fellow, Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, Executive Director Aidwatch
Email: brian.t.tomlinson@gmail.com
Interests: International development, NGOs in development cooperation, Canadian and global aid trends. I have worked for the past 45 years within the Canadian international civil society community, the last 15 years up to 2011 as senior aid policy analyst for the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (now Cooperation Canada). I am currently the Executive Director of AidWatch Canada, a very small CSO focusing on analysis of trends in Canadian and global aid. In this capacity, I am engaged at the global level, working on issues relating to closing space for civil society as development actors and am an active member of the DAC CSO Reference Group that advocates and follows closely changing policies and trends in development cooperation. I work closely with CCIC and some of its members on analysis of Canadian aid trends.
Jean-Michel Turcotte
Postdoctoral Fellow, Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz.
Email: turcotte@ieg-mainz.de
Interests: My research mainly focuses on humanitarian diplomacy and the treatment of prisoners of war and internees between 1939 and 1953, and the shaping of international humanitarian laws, i.e. Geneva Conventions, from 1864 to 1949.
Julia Van Drie
Undergraduate Student, Carleton University
Email: juliavandrie@cmail.carleton.ca
Interests: Globalization, Humanitarian aid, Religion and Conflict, and Canadian domestic and international policy.
Deanne Van Tol
Assistant Professor, Redeemer College University
Email: dvantol@redeemer.ca
Interests: Histories of humanitarianism, welfare, gender and empire in 20th century sub-Saharan Africa.
Robert Anthony Ventresca, PhD
Academic Dean (interim), King’s University College at Western University
Email: rventres@uwo.ca
Interests: Dr. Ventresca’s current research focuses on the role of religion in humanitarianism in the era of the two world wars, the Holocaust, and Cold War, with a special focus on transnational Catholic relief networks.
David Webster
Professor – History, Bishops University
Email: dwebster@ubishops.ca
Website: http://davidwebster.wordpress.com
Interests: Canadian foreign aid; development history; Canadians foreign relations; activist history; Southeast Asian history. Currently I am writing a book on Canadian development advisors in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Burma) from 1945 to 1965.
Related publications: Co-editor (with Greg Donaghy) of A Samaritan State Revisited: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Foreign Aid. Author Challenge the Strong Wind: Canada and East Timor 1975-99; Fire and the Full Moon: Canada and Indonesia in a Decolonizing World; “Development Advisors in a Time of Cold War and Decolonization: The UN Technical Assistance Administration, 1950-1959,” Journal of Global History 6 no. 2 (2011): 249-272; “End of the innocents: engagement and decolonization in the Global South since 1968.” Canadian Foreign Policy 24 no. 2 (2018).
Alex Wilson
Email: AlexHWilson@cmail.carleton.ca
Global and International Studies, 4th Year, Carleton University
Ann Witteveen
Humanitarian Aid Practitioner – Oxfam Canada
Email: ann.witteveen@oxfam.ca
Website: http://www.oxfam.ca/
Lydia Wytenbroek
Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, UBC
Email: lydia.wytenbroek@gmail.com
Interests: History of Missions / Nursing History
Hrag David Yacoubian
PhD Student, University of British Columbia, School of Nursing
Email: david.yacoubian@ubc.ca
Research Interests: David’s Master’s thesis focused on the humanitarian involvement of North American nurses during the Armenian genocide. This provided the groundwork for his current doctoral research.
Jonathon Zimmer
PhD Student, Queen’s University
Email: videozimmer@gmail.com
Research Interests:
Jonathon’s fields of interest involve a broad range of topics pertaining to the history of Canadian reactions to humanitarian crises. For instance, his MA thesis explores the reaction of the Canadian media to the Ethiopian Famine of 1984 and how this influenced federal approaches to the crisis. The media’s role in exposing the scope and scale of the Ethiopian famine, and in evaluating the effectiveness of the government’s response, played a crucial role in shaping the government’s aid priorities. The shock value of what was shown on TV was a powerful call to action, and Canadians expected their government to step up.
Jonathon is interested in continuing this line of research into his PhD by examining the actions of the Canadian government itself to further famine relief in Ethiopia.
