Our Experts

Jennifer Evans is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Carleton. A historian of contemporary Germany, her expertise includes transnational histories of sexuality, social memory, and visual culture. She also works on the history of populism and authoritarianism, especially as it evolves in social media and memory. Professor Evans has written books and articles on sexual subcultures in the aftermath of WWII, co-edited two books on same-sex sexuality, and another on the history of documentary photography. These […]

Fazıla Mat is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Victoria in the faculty of Political Science under the supervision of Dr. Oliver Schmidtke. Fazıla holds an MA degree in Humanities from the University of Milan and she has worked for over ten years as a journalist and commentator for Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa and other Italian and Swiss media, covering Turkish politics, EU-Turkey relations, issues concerning migration and civil society.  For OBC Transeuropa she also carried out […]

Dr. Peter J. Verovšek is Assistant Professor in Politics/International relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations of The University of Sheffield. He studied Government (high honors) and German as a undergraduate at Dartmouth College (AB 2006, summa cum laude). He then conducted research on the continuing effects of the memories of World War II in the politics of the former Yugoslavia as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar (2006-07), before receiving his MA (2008), MPhil (2010) and PhD (2013) in […]

Dr. Philip Giurlando is a Assistant Professor at Trent University, Department of Political Studies. He completed his BA in Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University in 2007. At Queen’s University (Kingston) he completed an MA in International Politics in 2008 and a PhD in Comparative and International Politics in 2013. His research interests include European Politics, populism, the politics of emotion and the politics of international hierarchies. He published a book titled Eurozone Politics (2015). Currently, Philip Giurlando has […]

Sabrina Paillé is a PhD student in sociology at York University, where she is also pursuing a Graduate Diploma Program in German and European Studies. She is a Visiting Student in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary in fall 2018. She holds a MA in sociology from Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal. Sabrina Paillé’s MA thesis focused on the way in which the relationship between Nazism and Modernity has been theorized in […]

Dr. Randy William Widdis is professor of the Department of Geography at the University of Regina. Dr. Widdis has written and taught extensively on the Canadian-American Borderlands and on Canadian migration to the United States and American migration to the Canadian Prairies. He is currently working on a book titled Neighbours in Paradox: The Evolution of the Canadian-American Borderlands, 1784-2017. In two volumes he describes, first, the beginnings from frontiers to borderlands, and second, the transformations, configurations and reconfigurations during […]

For over a decade Nimo Bokore’s research focused on immigrant and refugee resettlement in Canada. Her latest study explores how Canadian-Somali women conceptualize war trauma, forced migration, and how these circumstances influence their later resettlement process.  She is currently collaborating with other teams on projects  such as: (1)“Emerging voices: how Syrian newcomers and other key stakeholders perceive Canada’s three sponsorship programs for refugee (re)settlement”   funded by the Social Science And Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connection Grant (2) “Finding a Space […]

Kristin Semmens specialises in the history of tourism and leisure under Hitler. Currently she is also working on a book project for Bloomsbury Press, a short introduction to the Third Reich. Research Interests: The Holocaust, German history, Modern European history, History of tourism and leisure, and Public history

Charlotte Schallié is an Associate Professor and current Department Chair in the department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria. Her research interested include post-1945 diasporic and transcultural writing/filmmaking, memory studies, Jewish identity in contemporary cultural discourse, transcultural studies, and Holocaust education. Her current SSHRC-funded research project —“Narrative Art and Visual Storytelling in Holocaust and Human Rights Education,” develops a new dialogical-reflective pedagogy in Holocaust and Human Rights education fostering broad and deep collaborations and intercultural exchange between researchers, […]

Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross is an Associate Professor at the Department of History (Humanities) at the University of Victoria. In his research and teaching Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross focuses on immigration, race, and inequality in twentieth century North America, with an emphasis on urban politics and experience. He has written on the experience of Italian immigrants in post-war North America. From 2010 to 2013, he was the chair of the urban studies committee at the University of Victoria. Comprised of faculty members in departments across […]

Dr. Helga Thorson is an an Associate Professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria. Dr. Thorson’s research interests lie in modernist German and Austrian literature, Scandinavian studies, gender studies, history of medicine, foreign language pedagogy, and Holocaust studies. She also teaches the I-Witness field school; a four week course examining Holocaust memoralization in Central Europe. Research Interests: German and Austrian literature, Scandinavian Studies, Gender Studies, History of Medicine, and Holocaust Studies

Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk is professor at the departments of Germanic and Slavic Studies and History. His fields of expertise are: Russian History, Soviet Culture, Modern Ukraine, Stalinism (including Stalinist cinema, Nikolai Gogol), and modern Russian national identity as reflected in film and literature. Dr. Yekelchyk is author of Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination (University of Toronto Press, 2004); Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford University Press, 2007; Choice magazine “Outstanding Academic Title” for […]

Miriam M. Müller-Rensch (Joint PhD) received her doctorate jointly from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and the University of Victoria, Canada, in Political Science and International Relations. With her interdisciplinary dissertation on East German Foreign Policy in Southern Yemen, she especially addressed the role of Marxism-Leninism with regard to “Socialist state- and nation-building” in the Global South during the Cold War. Specialized in the politics of the Middle East, she focuses on religious and political ideologies, statehood, international security […]

Agnes Whitfield is a Full Professor in the Department of English at York University and the author of numerous publications in the field of translation theory and cultural exchange. Her current research projects focus on policy models for reciprocal cultural exchange, the history of literary translators with special interest in women translators, the concepts of gender and voice in literary translation, and literary translation exchange between English and French within Canada and between Canada and Europe. She has led a […]

John Peter Oleson’s research focuses on ancient technology, particularly ships, harbours, and water-supply systems. Since 1971 he has directed or participated in underwater excavations at a number of Roman harbour sites in Italy, Israel, Egypt, and Turkey. Between 1986 and 2005  Dr. Oleson directed excavations at the site of Humayma, ancient Hawara, a Nabataean, Roman, and Early Islamic settlement in Jordan’s southern desert. He has published 10 books and more than 95 articles concerning ancient technology, marine archaeology, the Nabataeans, and […]

Matt Pollard is interested in the relationship between the visual arts and literature, as well as the historical and political contexts of (inter)cultural expression, ranging from Nietzsche reception in the popular culture of the English-speaking world, sport as spectacle, and the ongoing debates regarding the overlap between mass media, propaganda and reportage. At present Dr. Pollard is a member of a four-author team creating a two-year textbook for teaching German language and / through culture. Research Interests: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century […]