Robert Sweeny is a socio-economic historian, who lives in St John's Newfoundland with Elizabeth-Anne Malischewski. His monograph Why Did We Choose to Industrialize? won the 2016 Governor General's award for scholarly research. He is currently working on gender, property and national identities. A Professor of History at Memorial, Robert has been involved in the H-GIS project Montréal, l'avenir du passé since its inception in 2000.