This post is part of our NiCHE at 20 series that reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the Network in Canadian History and Environment.
2014–2015 was a formative period for me in terms of my career. In Spring/Summer 2014, I began my role as NiCHE’s social media editor, and I began my one-year stint as NiCHE New Scholars Representative. As other fellow NiCHE colleagues have noted time and again, the network has been instrumental in the early careers of many individuals. This is not a coincidence. From its beginning, NiCHE has foregrounded the support of emerging scholars in Canadian environmental history, most notably with its New Scholars committee and community. Though the activities and formats of this community have varied and evolved over the past two decades, it has always been led by a New Scholars Representative, who also serves as part of the NiCHE Executive.
When I sat down to think of ways to mark NiCHE’s twentieth anniversary, a check-in with my fellow NiCHE New Scholars representatives immediately came to mind. Though much of my time as New Scholars rep has faded from my memory, I do remember how exciting it was to be invited into the fold and to begin to forge connections that remain central to my personal and professional life to this day. I made my first appearance on Nature’s Past, discussing my experience at the second World Congress of Environmental History, organized monthly discussions, including a co-led discussion on “When Research Turns Political,” wrote a recap of my first major workshop, “Environmental from Below,” attended my first CHESS, and wrote my first CHESS reflection, “Park Déjà vu.” Looking through this old material is definitely an exercise in nostalgia. I owe so much to this community. Thanks all!
NiCHE New Scholars Reps – Where Are They Now?
Daniel Rück (2006–07)
What was your topic of study in graduate school?
History. I did my MA and PhD at McGill University.
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
I learned a lot about how to organize a national network, and I learned a lot about academia by interacting with senior scholars.
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
NiCHE gave me access to a great network of historians with similar research interests. I formed life-long friendships and professional partnerships with many of them.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
I am heartened by efforts of NiCHE to make connections between environmental history and the history of colonialism in Canada. I have not been very involved in NiCHE in the last decade but have been impressed with what it has been able to do on the basis of volunteer labour and very little funding. Keep up the good work!
What are you up to nowadays?
I’m Associate Professor of History at the University of Ottawa.
- Visit Dan’s website.
- Read a review of Dan’s book The Laws and the Land.
- Watch Dan’s NiCHE Conversation with Jessica DeWitt on “The Legal and Environmental History of Settler Colonialism.”
Jennifer Bonnell (2007–08)
What was your topic of study in graduate school?
History Education, OISE, University of Toronto
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
NiCHE was just getting off the ground and there was funding from a SSHRC clusters grant to support graduate student involvement in the new network as well as dissemination of our research through various projects. It was a great time to be involved in encouraging new scholars to join the network, build new professional relationships, and share their work.
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
NiCHE nurtured my cohort of graduate students studying environmental history and related fields. It provided us with opportunities and small amounts of funding to support our early initiatives and our participation in a growing community of Canadian environmental historians. It created a welcoming network of senior, mid-career, and fellow emerging scholars that supported us in completing our dissertations, publishing our first work, and preparing us for our first job talks. It’s hard to overstate the role of NiCHE in supporting my early career: it was my principal scholarly community at the time, and Alan and other executive members made it clear they wanted the involvement of new scholars like me in shaping what it would become.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
NiCHE has far surpassed my wishes for the network: that it continue to build a community of scholars interested in the history of Canadian environments; that it establish and maintain a robust online presence with regular and meaningful publications; that it continue to host an annual in-person gathering (CHESS) to bring people together. More of the same, please! (and the swag! so great!)
What are you up to nowadays?
I’m an Associate Professor of History at York University in Toronto. I teach environmental history, mostly at the graduate level, and run the university’s public history certificate program.
Learn more about Jen’s work at jenniferbonnell.com.
Sean Kheraj (2008–09)
What is/was your topic of study in graduate school?
Canadian environmental history; York University.
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
During my time as NS rep, we focused on the development of an online community for graduate students spread across Canada and around the world. We started holding an online reading group to review draft work. The membership even included a graduate student who was living in Japan at the time. Oh, and that’s the year I started the Nature’s Past podcast!
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
NiCHE was instrumental to my career development. It created opportunities for networking, projects, and connecting with new research in the field. I met some many great people as NS rep who remain good friends and colleagues today.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
I’d like NiCHE to continue to create opportunities for new scholars to flourish, connect with the field of Canadian environmental history, and find community. I also want NiCHE to continue to create space for experimentation where new scholars can try new things, especially in digital communication and knowledge mobilization.
What are you up to nowadays?
I am an associate professor in the Department of History at Toronto Metropolitan University where I am currently serving a term as Vice-Provost Academic. I’m also still a member of the NiCHE executive and the treasurer.
Will Knight (2009–11)
What was your topic of study in graduate school?
Sport fisheries administration at Trent (MA) and fisheries and museums at Carleton (PhD).
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
Connecting with fellow grad students and planning/co-hosting with Lauren Wheeler Place and Placelessness, a virtual conference with international reach long before we had ever heard about Zoom. And participating and later organizing in various CHESS sessions.
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
NiCHE was instrumental — it connected me to environmental history in Canada, introduced me to friends and colleagues I am still connected to, and allowed me to explore public history.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
That it continues to flourish and give graduate students the opportunities that I enjoyed.
What are you up to nowadays?
I have been curator of agriculture and fisheries at Ingenium, Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, since I completed my PhD in 2014.
Lauren Wheeler (2011–12)
What is/was your topic of study in graduate school?
Public History, Environmental History, 20th Century Alberta, National Parks
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
It was an excellent opportunity to build understanding of collaborative, remote work and to network with new scholars and established academics. Built a very supportive community of new scholars, many of whom I continue to be in contact with years after leaving academia.
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
Excellent experience in networking, building and maintaining communities of practice, and exposure to different ways of approaching collaborative work. As new scholar rep when virtual meetings were in their infancy and social media was still new and shiny and not filled with vitriol, it was a great opportunity to get comfortable with emerging technologies and learn how to adapt them to engaging across time zones.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
I hope NiCHE continues to foster connections for new scholars and supports them in the early years as graduate students. Showcasing new research and offering opportunities to write non-academic pieces for the website are important aspects of how NiCHE helps new scholars grow their skills. I also hope that it can better expand its representation of what environmental historians do outside academia and outside the confines of the definition of environmental history. Many of the past new scholars are now working outside academia and often outside fields traditionally though of part of environmental history. Speaking from experience, my participating with NiCHE and in environmental history is something that informs how I approach working with museums in the area of social responsibility.
What are you up to nowadays?
I am the Strategic Services Director at the Alberta Museums Association (AMA). I look after the strategic alignment with operations and service / program delivery to the 400 + institutional and individual members in museums across Alberta. I also monitor our Adaptability Ends work which includes our internal and external facing environmental sustainability programs, and our work towards upholding UNDRIP and the TRC Calls to Action for museums.
I started with the AMA in 2013 and previously oversaw the Recognized Museum Program – the longest running standards-based accreditation program for museums in Canada.
Explore Lauren’s website.
Laura Larsen (2015–16)
What is/was your topic of study in graduate school?
Agricultural transportation and western alienation in the Canadian prairies. University of Saskatchewan.
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
I remember how fascinating it was to meet the wide variety of people involved with the New Scholars through the virtual meet-ups. It was a great way to see what other people were involved with and learn about new research that was far beyond my own area of specialization.
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
NiCHE was a wonderful opportunity to connect with other people. Through these connections I learned about opportunities – from scholarships to archival collections – that I would otherwise have been unaware of during my time in graduate school.
Image: Self portrait in the bin.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
I look forward to seeing what interesting and innovative Canadian and environmental history NiCHE will showcase over the next decades. I hope that NiCHE to continues maintaining its focus on engaging a broad audience.
What are you up to nowadays?
I am a full-time grain farmer with my partner.
- Read “Trawling the Ocean of Grass: Soil Nitrogen in Saskatchewan Agriculture, 1916–2001” by Laura Larsen in Social Science History
- Read “Economics and Emotion: The Ideological Debate Over Prairie Grain Marketing, 1973–1996” by Laura Larsen in Histoire sociale/Social History
Mica Jorgenson (2016–17)
What was your topic of study in graduate school?
My PhD was on the environmental history of gold mining in northern Ontario.
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
Meeting other new scholars in Environmental history at CHESS. Doing environmental history as a PhD can be a lonely experience — it was revelatory to meet other folks who were nerdy and passionate about the same things as me!
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
My publications on NiCHE are among my most read articles, and writing/editing as part of various series have led to conference panels, edited collections, and other collaborations within and outside academia.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
The connectivity and networking parts of NiCHE are what makes it thrive. I would love to see the revival of more in-person events for NiCHE contributors, such as CHESS.
What are you up to nowadays?
I live in northern BC with my partner, and I work for BC Wildfire in legislation and policy development.
Heather Green (2018–19)
What is/was your topic of study in graduate school?
I graduated from the University of Alberta in 2018 where I studied the environmental history of gold mining in the Klondike region of the Yukon from the 1880s to 1940s with a particular emphasis on colonial mining implications for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation.
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
Serving as the NiCHE New Scholars rep was an ideal position for me. I took on the role the year I finished my PhD and began a postdoc where I wasn’t surrounded with as much environmental history colleagues. Acting as the NS rep allowed me to connect with other ECRs and to keep up to date on new scholarship and themes in the filed. I also thoroughly enjoyed editing the “Unearthed” series interviewing environmental history graduate students and ECRs.
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
NiCHE has been a critical aspect of my career. I can’t state enough how much of a role this community has had in providing me opportunities to learn and grow as a scholar from writing/publishing, editorial work, connecting with folks around the world through New Scholars rep and EiC work, and learning how a successful organization runs behind the scenes. In the time that I have been involved with NiCHE, we’ve seen some changes in terms of fundraising, our ability to provide honoraria, beginning our Book and Article prize, NiCHE conversation series, launching a merchandise shop, and many other exciting transitions. NiCHE has also provided assistance with supporting a Project Page for the Northern Borders Project, a collaborative project I am a part of, and has been very generous the last several years in hosting the David Neufeld Memorial Lecture. I encourage my peers in the EH community to get involved with NiCHE in any way you can.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
I’m very excited to continue working with NiCHE into the future and especially keen on following this community as it grows in its next 20 years. One thing I’d love to see NiCHE be able to do more of in the future is host/support more in-person environmental humanities events. NiCHE is at the forefront of cultivating a truly wonderful community of scholars who are passionate about the work and supportive of their peers and more in-person events, I feel, would allow these connections to bloom even further and form the basis of more collaborations among scholars and with the public.
What are you up to nowadays?
I’m now an associate professor in history at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, and still working with NiCHE as an editor (and co-Editor-in-Chief)!
Blake Butler (2021–22)
What is/was your topic of study in graduate school?
History of snow in Vancouver. Western University
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
I remember all the great people that I met through the many NiCHE New Scholars events. There were still pandemic-related lockdowns during my term, and I think folks were looking for ways to connect with each other online (even though many of us had Zoom fatigue!). I had the privilege to meet so many wonderful people who were working on such interesting and insightful environmental historical projects around the world. It’s been great to see what people are up to years later and to unexpectedly bump into folks (in-person!) at conferences.
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
NiCHE furthered my interest in public-facing historical work. Volunteering and publishing with NiCHE gave me greater confidence to share my work publicly. It also encouraged me to reconsider why, where, and for whom I shared my historical research and further convinced me to pursue a career in history.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
I hope that NiCHE continues to be the primary hub and leading resource for Canadian environmental historians.
What are you up to nowadays?
Now, I work as a project manager at Know History, a historical services firm. Know History supports individuals and organizations that want to research, present, or document the past. We work with museums, government bodies, Indigenous communities, non-profits, and corporations on a variety of projects both large and small. Much of my work is associated with projects that support Indigenous communities who are conducting residential school research.
I am also a member of the Protect Our Winters (POW) Canada’s Science Alliance. POW is a passionate community of enthusiasts, professional athletes, and industry brands uniting the outdoor community to advocate for policy solutions to climate change. The Science Alliance guides POW’s climate action strategy and supports the POW community to better understand climate science, communicate to their peers, and implement effective climate solutions.
… And I am still involved with NiCHE! I now serve as a member of the editorial board and a book review co-editor.
Check out the NiCHE series that Blake edited with Joshua McGuffie during his time as New Scholars Rep, Radiation in Canada.
Nuala Caomhanach (2023– Present)
What is/was your topic of study in graduate school?
I am currently a PhD candidate at New York University and the American Museum of Natural History. I study international conservation law and science in Madagascar.
What do you remember of your time as NiCHE New Scholars Rep?
The scholarly possibilities–from blog articles to reading groups- and abilities to collaborate and engage with a wide range of environmental historians.
Image: Herbarium specimen of Alluaudia procera (Drake). Image taken by Caomhanach. Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris (France). Collection: Vascular plants (P) Specimen P00446832.
What is the impact of NiCHE on your career?
One aspect that NiCHE has on my career is that it makes me consider daily what we mean by the concept of “nature” and “environment” within legal, political, cultural and scientific frameworks. Another aspect is getting to interact with a diverse range of scholars all pondering the concepts and ideas I am puzzling through–that’s so exciting to me and my career.
Do you have any visions or wishes for NiCHE’s next 20 years?
That it continues to be as provocative and interdisciplinary as it is.
What are you up to nowadays?
I am currently writing up my dissertation.
- Read Nuala’s first post with NiCHE “Digitizing Death: The botanical collections of Madagascar and the race to document life”
- Read “Building an inclusive botany: The ‘radicle’ dream” by Makenzie E. Mabry, Nuala Caomhanach, et.al., in Plants People Planet.
Shoutout to our other past NiCHE New Scholars Reps not represented in this post: Michael Commito (2011–13); Pete Anderson (2013–14); Robynne Mellor (2017–18); Justin Fisher (2020–21); Heather Rogers (2022–23).
Feature Image: Justin Fisher (New Scholars Rep, 2020–21) was the first to use a green maple leaf version of the NiCHE blue maple leaf logo to represent the NiCHE New Scholars community.
Latest posts by Jessica DeWitt (see all)
- NiCHE at 20 – New Scholars Reps: Where Are They Now? - November 28, 2024
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: October 2024 - November 18, 2024
- Call for Submissions – From Coulees to Muskeg: A Saskatchewan Environmental History Series - October 15, 2024
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: September 2024 - October 8, 2024
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: August 2024 - September 21, 2024
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: July 2024 - August 15, 2024
- Call for Submissions: Sustainable Publishing Special Issue - July 26, 2024
- Online Event – Demystifying the Hidden Curriculum for New Professors – ASEH Connects - July 17, 2024
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: June 2024 - July 6, 2024
- Online Event – ASEH Connects – Let’s Chat About Communicating Environmental History to the Public - July 5, 2024
Amazing!