The following scholars (working in Canada) have developed research agendas on the history of human rights.

Click here for an up-to-date list of recent publications.

Graduate Students

• Matt Baglole, University of New Brunswick

Matt Baglole is currently working on his dissertation titled "To Remedy the Accidents of Birth": Rights Activism in Halifax, 1960-1982."  It is essentially an attempt to link the activism of three communities (Black, Women and Gay & Lesbian) to the content of Canadian human rights legislation and discourse.  The dissertation looks at social movement dynamics (mobilization; claims and resources; and tactics) and seeks to link them to the specific rights initiatives introduced between the Bill and Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Its central contention is that rights are not universal but the products of specific historical struggles. 

Matt Baglole is a doctoral candidate at the University of New Brunswick.

• Jonathan Nordland, Provincial Archives of Alberta

Jonathan Nordland is a Masters of Arts Candidate in the Archival Studies program at the University of Manitoba.

Canadianists

• Eric Adams, University of Alberta

Eric Adams is interested in the history of Canadian constitutional law. He is working on a monograph entitled, The Idea of Constitutional Rights and the Transformation of Canadian Constitutional Law, which locates a critical strand of Canada's twentieth-century rights revolution in the constitutional thinking of legal scholars, lawyers, and judges. Drawing on archival documents, personal papers, government reports,
parliamentary debates, case law, and legal scholarship, this work traces the constitutional thought and culture that first propelled human rights and fundamental freedoms to the forefront of the Canadian legal
imagination.

Eric Adams is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta.

• Stephanie Bangarth, King's University College, U.W.O.

Stephanie Bangarth's research interests include the issue of 'race' in North American history, law and politics, immigration and ethnicity and in the history of social movements in modern Canadian history.  In 2003 she completed her dissertation, titled, "The politics of human rights: Canadian and American advocacy groups and the 'defence' of the internment of North America's citizens of Japanese ancestry."  Some of Dr. Bangarth's recent publications include "Religious organizations and the 'relocation' of persons of Japanese ancestry in North America: evaluating advocacy."  American Review of Canadian Studies (forthcoming, Fall 2004) and "'We are not asking you to open wide the gates for Chinese immigration': the Committee for the Repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act and early human rights activism in Canada."  Canadian Historical Review (Vol. 84, 3, September 2003): 395-422.

Stephanie Bangarth is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at King's University College, University of Western Ontario. [www.uwo.ca/kings/academic_programs/departments/history/faculty/bangarth.html]

• Michael Behiels, University of Ottawa

Michael Behiels received a SSHRC Standard Research Grant in 2004:  The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: origins, framing and adoption, 1960-82. 

Michael Behiels is a Professor of history at the University of Ottawa.

• Linda Cardinal, University of Ottawa

Linda Cardinal is interested in the political culture of rights in Canada.  Her interest in the study of human rights arises out of her work on the politics of language in Canada and Europe.  Some of the issues she is currently examining includes modernity and identity Québec, Ireland and United Kingdom; governance of minority languages, Canada-Europe; women and minorities; and citizenship debates.  

Linda Cardinal is a professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa and the Chaire de recherche sur la francophonie et les politiques publiques.

• Dominique Clément, University of Alberta

Dominique Clément is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta [www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/sociology2/clement.cfm].

• George Egerton, University of B.C.

George Egerton's research interests include twentieth century international organizations (League of Nations); twentieth century British, American, and Canadian foreign policy; modern Canadian religious history; and, the history of piano technology.  He has published extensively on the intersection of religion, politics and jurisprudence in Canada since 1945 with a focus on human rights issues.  He has also taught a graduate course on human rights in Canada.  

George Egerton is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of British Columbia.  

• Ruth Frager, McMaster University

Ruth Frager's teaching and research focuses on women's history, the history of immigrant groups, and working-class history, emphasizing modern Canada. Her new book, co-authored with Carmela Patrias, is entitled Discounted Labour: Women Workers in Canada, 1870-1939. Her earlier book, Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Jewish Labour Movement in Toronto, 1900-1939, won an award from the Ontario Historical Society. She is now working on the human rights campaigns in Ontario in the aftermath of the Second World War. Her most recent articles are: "Labour History and the Interlocking Hierarchies of Class, Ethnicity, and Gender: A Canadian Perspective," in the International Review of Social History and "'This is Our Country, These Are Our Rights': Minorities and the Origins of Ontario's Human Rights Campaigns," co-authored with Carmela Patrias, in the Canadian Historical Review.

Ruth Frager is a Professor in the Department of History at McMaster University. 

• Matthew Hayday, Guelph University.

Matthew Hayday's research interests focus on the development of Canadian identity politics since the Second World War. A key aspect of his research focusses on the development of language rights in Canada, particularly the rights of official language minority communities. He is the author of Bilingual Today, United Tomorrow: Official Languages in Education and Canadian Federalism (McGill-Queen's, 2005), a number of scholarly articles on the role played by social movements and state actors in the development of Canadian language rights at both the federal and provincial levels of government. He is also the co-editor, with Marie Hammond-Callaghan, of Mobilizations, Protests and Engagements: Canadian Perspectives on Social Movements (Fernwood, 2008).

Matthew Hayday is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Guelph [www.uoguelph.ca/history/faculty/hayday.shtml].

• John Hobbins, McGill University

John Hobbins is a Law Librarian at McGill University.

• Ross Lambertson, Camosun College

Ross Lambertson is an instructor in the School of Arts and Science at Camosun College.

• Laurel Macdowell, University of Toronto 

Laurel Macdowell is a Professor of history at the University of Toronto.

• Dominique Marshall, Carleton University

Dominique Marshall is currently exploring two topics related to human rights: "The Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations, the Declaration of Children's Rights," and "Canada -The History of Children's Rights and of Humanitarian Aid to Africa from 1900 to 1965."  She is the author of Aux origines sociales de l'État-providence: familles québécoises et politiques sociales touchant les enfants entre 1940 et 1950 (Montreal, Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1998) and offers a course on the international history of humanitarian aid.

Dominique Marshall is a Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University (profile).

• David McNab, York University

David T. McNab is a Métis public historian who has worked for more than a quarter century on Aboriginal land and treaty rights issues in Canada. He has also been a claims advisor for Nin.Da.Waab.Jig., Walpole Island Heritage Center, Bkejwanong First Nations since 1992. In addition to almost sixty published articles, David has published Earth, Water, Air and Fire: Studies in Canadian Ethnohistory (editor) (1998) and Circles of Time: Aboriginal Land Rights and Resistance in Ontario (1999) as well as the co-edited  Blockades and Resistance: Studies in Actions of Peace and the Temagami Blockades of 1988-89 (2003) all with WLU Press. His latest co-edited book (with Ute Lischke) is entitled Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and their Representations which was published earlier this year with WLU Press. 

David McNab is an Associate Professor of Native Studies in the School of Arts and Letters in the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University, in Toronto.

• Janet Miron, Trent University

Janet Miron is editing a book on the history of human rights in post-confederation Canada. It will examine different episodes and themes related to the history of human rights within a chronological framework. Highlighting many critical moments in Canadian history, the work will delineate the multitude of forms discrimination took both in times of peace and war, and the very slow evolution of Canada’s commitment to protecting and enhancing human rights. Some of the key themes include immigration and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, disability, and state formation. This will be the first edited collection to concentrate on the history of human rights in Canada and, as such, will make an important contribution to the existing historiography.

Janet Miron is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Trent University.

• Carmela Patrias, Brock University

Carmela Patrias is a Professor in the Department of History at Brock University.

• Kathleen Rodgers, University of Ottawa

TBA.

• Miriam Smith, York University

Miriam Smith's research interests include Canadian & U.S. politics, public policy, public law, social movements as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender policy and politics. Her books include Political Institutions and Lesbian and Gay Rights in the United States and Canada (2008); Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada (2008); Critical Policy Studies: Contemporary Canadian Approaches (2007); A Civil Society?: Collective Actors in Canadian Political Life (2005); New Trends in Canadian Federalism. 2nd edition. (2003); Lesbian and Gay Rights in Canada: Social Movements and Equality-Seeking, 1971-1995 (1999).

Miriam Smith is a Professor in the Law & Society Program, Department of Social Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies at York University.

• James Walker , University of Waterloo

James Walker's research interests include Canadian Blacks, Race Relations, Africa and Human Rights. He is the author of The Black Loyalists (UTP, 1992) and "Race”, Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), and has written many articles on the history of human rights law and human rights activism in Canada.

James Walker is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Waterloo (profile)

Non-Canadianists

• David Black, Dalhousie University

David Black is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University, and the Director of the Centre for Foreign Studies.

• Marc Epprecht, Queen's University

Marc Epprecht is an Associate Professor in the Development Studies Program and the Department of History at Queen's University [www.queensu.ca/history/people/facultyinstructorsalpha/epprecht.html].

• Pamela Jordan, University of Saskatchewan

Pamela Jordan is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan [http://artsandscience.usask.ca/history/people/detail.php?bioid=616].

• Gary Teeple, Simon Fraser University

Gary Teeple is a Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University.