The History Department welcomes Postdoctoral Scholars.

Current Postdoctoral Scholars

Victor D Boantza

I work on the history and philosophy of early modern European science and particularly alchemy and chemistry, from the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution to the eighteenth-century Chemical Revolution. My research includes the historical ontology of chemical concepts, the didactic origins of chemistry, matter and elemental theories, chemical philosophies, imponderable fluid theories, Enlightenment scientific culture and the relationships between (al)chemistry, religion, and natural philosophy.

My doctoral dissertation, completed at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, explores the interplay between vitalism, mechanism and materialism in early modern French and British perceptions of matter and corresponding scientific practices. Examining a series of interconnected scientific debates in their immediate historical contexts, the dissertation offers a new understanding of the relationship between the ‘physical’ and the ‘chymical’ in early modern natural philosophy through the development and application of the notion of ‘scientific style’. Parts of my work appeared in Annals of Science, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Historia Scientiarum; I am currently co-editing a volume on ‘Controversies Within the Scientific Revolution’.

As a Tomlinson Postdoctoral Fellow, I plan to carry out research on the early Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences, focusing on a multifaceted confrontation between (al)chemical agendas and (meta)physical doctrines, during the protectorate of the Academy’s establisher Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1666-1682), situating that period in the multiple contexts of matter theories, empiricism, philosophy, religion, politics, and the Scientific Revolution. These formative years encompass debates about the nature of scientific research; the interactions between the collective production of natural knowledge and the various shades of opinion within the Academy; as well as the negotiation of the identity of a scientific institution in the age of Absolutism. My project will explore the ways by which these factors commingled and came to bear upon the tensions between traditional Chemical Philosophy—drawing on alchemy, Neo-Platonism, Paracelsianism and Hermeticism—and the burgeoning Mechanical Philosophy, established on Cartesian and Gassendist revivals of ancient atomism coupled with an ontology predicated upon physically governed matter and motion. Uncovering the dynamics of this interaction will situate the early Academy in the context of the Intellectual and Scientific Revolutions, thus promoting an understanding of its formation as an outcome of the high culture of its time.
Email Victor Boantza

Mourad Djebabla
Historien de formation, je me spécialise en histoire militaire, et plus précisément dans les diverses formes d'implication du Québec et du Canada dans la Première Guerre mondiale de 1914-1918. Mon mémoire de maîtrise (UQAM, 2003) portait sur la mémoire québécoise de la Première Guerre mondiale en 1919-1998, tandis que ma thèse (UQAM, 2008) touchait aux représentations de la guerre diffusées dans la société civile québécoise et ontarienne lors de la Première Guerre mondiale, en 1914-1918. Mon mémoire de maîtrise a été publié à l'automne 2004 sous le titre Se souvenir de la Grande Guerre, la mémoire plurielle de 14-18 au Québec (chez VLB éditeur).
Détenteur d’une bourse de 2 ans du FQRSC, je poursuis des études postdoctorales à McGill depuis l’automne 2008. Sous la supervision du professeur Carman Miller, mon sujet de recherche touche à l’économie des vires au Canada en 1917-1918. S’il est un épisode de l’implication du Canada dans la Première Guerre mondiale de 1914-1918 qui demeure encore largement méconnu, c’est bien la question de l’économie et de la production des vivres en 1917-1918. Pourtant, cette question des vivres est sans doute le moment où, pour la première fois, et non sans quelques réticences au début, le gouvernement canadien décida d’encadrer le commerce des vivres et de guider les Canadiens sur ce qu’ils pouvaient ou non mettre dans leurs assiettes. Étudier la question des vivres en 1917-1918, revient à caractériser la « totalisation » de la guerre au Canada, ou comment l’ensemble de la population civile, dans ses gestes les plus banals, a été impliquée à soutenir l’effort de guerre canadien.
Une étude de l'économie des vivres au Canada, en 1917-1918, permet de mettre en lumière les politiques prises par le gouvernement fédéral canadien afin d’amener la population civile à restreindre sa consommation de denrées réservées à l’exportation car définies comme primordiales pour le soutien des Alliés : blé, bacon, bœuf. Le choix des années 1917-1918 permet de mettre en lumière la mise en place et les directives prises par le Contrôleur des vivres (1917), puis par le Commissaire des vivres du Canada (1918) pour répondre aux besoins en denrées des Alliés, et en particulier de l’Angleterre faisant face à une pénurie alimentaire. Dans un contexte où la population canadienne fait pourtant face à une inflation des prix des principales denrées, l’ensemble des civils, quelque que soit l’âge, le sexe ou la condition sociale, étaient appelés, par le gouvernement canadien, à s’inscrire dans un effort de guerre alimentaire. Que ce soit depuis les cuisines des ménagères ou les champs, la victoire des Alliés semblait alors dépendre de la « conscription des estomacs » des Canadiens et de leur mobilisation pour produire des vivres.
Pour aborder ce sujet, l'approche politique permet de décrire les différentes mesures législatives prises par les gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux pour amener la population à répondre aux impératifs voulus. Une approche culturelle est aussi intéressante pour caractériser la manière dont chaque province, compte tenu de son bagage culturel, a répondu aux besoins. Il est alors intéressant de voir si, pour les vivres, nous pouvons retrouver ou non les clivages qui apparaissent déjà entre Canadiens anglais et Canadiens français au niveau de la mobilisation des volontaires pour le Corps Expéditionnaire canadien. Bien entendu, outre l'approche sociopolitique et culturelle, il demeure indispensable de se pencher sur l'impact économique de la surproduction agricole voulue et soutenue par les gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux pour répondre aux demandes en vivres de l'Europe en guerre. Le sujet étant pan-canadien, pour le mener à bien, il semble utile de faire des choix parmi les provinces. Nous retenons le Québec, notamment pour caractériser l’implication des Canadiens français, ainsi que l’Ontario, qui a pu s’impliquer de manière si importante dans l’effort de guerre canadien et impérial. Enfin, le choix de la Saskatchewan se justifie car elle constitue le grenier à blé du Canada et, à ce titre, elle a pu attirer l’attention des autorités fédérales en 1917-1918.
Email Mourad Djebala

Julia Laite
Julia Laite is a social historian whose research interests include the history of women, sexuality, crime and criminal justice, and migration in Britain and the wider world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She was awarded a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge in 2008, which she completed with the support of a Commonwealth Scholarship. Her doctoral dissertation, which examined the criminalization of prostitution in London between 1885 and 1930, was recently awarded the Ellen MacArthur Prize for best dissertation in social and economic history submitted at Cambridge in 2007. A book based upon this dissertation, entitled Criminalizing Commercial Sex: Prostitution and Repression in London, 1885-1960, is forthcoming in early 2011.

She took up a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University in January of 2010, supervised by Suzanne Morton. In this current research project she is exploring the connections between Britain, Europe, and the wider world through the issue of sexual trafficking and migrant prostitution between 1850 and 1950. This project is international and transnational in scope, and aims to link migrant prostitution and trafficking to international labour markets and to women’s migration more generally in the increasingly interconnected nineteenth and twentieth century world. It will also examine the role that discourses about sex trafficking played in the development of international social and political organizations, and explore the connections between the crusade against sex trafficking and the development and escalation of immigration control.

Kathryn Muller
Kathryn Muller is an ethnohistorian who explores relationships between indigenous peoples and newcomers in the country we now call Canada. Her doctoral dissertation, completed at Queen’s University, brought together written documents, oral traditions, and wampum belts to explain how the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) conceptualized relations with foreigners, from the pre-contact period to the present day. She highlighted a common moral code, the kaswentha ethic, which united the Haudenosaunee nations by stressing peace, collaboration, and autonomy in affairs of local importance, and tracked the evolution of this particular worldview as it was rearticulated over a period of approximately six hundred years.
Kathryn’s postdoctoral research, funded by the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture, will explore how the kaswentha ethic worked on a very local level in the mission community of Kanehsatà:ke. She is interested in examining how the Mohawk of Kanehsatà:ke reconciled their own political and religious autonomy with the conversion attempts by the Sulpician fathers and how both parties co-created a new, mixed religious culture through a complex process of métissage. Broader issues that speak to Kanehsatà:ke’s autonomy will also be explored, including ties with the other mission communities in the Seven Nations of Canada and the movement of people, ideas, and wampum between them. While the Oka Crisis will be examined as a modern manifestation of ancient expressions of autonomy, this work neither begins nor ends with those long, hot summer days of 1990; instead, Kathryn seeks to explore a constantly changing narrative of independence, collaboration, and coexistence expressed throughout Kanehsatà:ke’s history.
Email Kathryn Muller

Stephanie Olsen

Stephanie Olsen currently holds a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, supervised by Elizabeth Elbourne and Judith Surkis, Harvard University. Her project is entitled “Towards the Modern Male Citizen: Psychology, Adolescence and the Informal Education of Boys in Britain, 1880-1914.” Her doctoral dissertation, “Raising Fathers, Raising Boys: Informal Education and Enculturation in Britain, 1880-1914,” was supervised by Brian Lewis, Elizabeth Elbourne and Michèle Cohen. Stephanie held doctoral scholarships from SSHRC (Canada Graduate Scholarship) and the Fondation Ricard, and was the beneficiary of a research fellowship at Princeton University. She graduated with an MA in History from the University of British Columbia, a BA (Hons.) in International Studies from Glendon College (York University) and an IB from Pearson United World College. Her research interests include gender, religion, education, childhood and publishing in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. She has published three articles on these topics. In the UK, she has given papers at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and York, and has also presented at UC Berkeley, the University of Auckland and at the Canadian Historical Association. Stephanie is affiliated with the North American Conference on British Studies, the Canadian Historical Association, the Society for the History of Childhood and Youth, and the Institute of Historical Research in London. She is the founder of the annual McGill-Queen’s Graduate Conference in History. At McGill, she has lectured on twentieth-century Britain and taught the seminar “Women and Gender in Modern Britain.”
Email Stephanie Olsen

Funding Opportunities

NEW

Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowships in the Humanities and Related Social Sciences at McGill University
Two Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships will be awarded for the academic year 2010-2011 to promising young scholars. The stipend for each fellow is $45,000 (plus benefits), in addition to a research allowance of $8500. The Fellowship is renewable once. Each fellow will teach a one semester undergraduate course in each term and may be asked to give a public presentation on his or her research. Fellows will be provided with office space and are expected to be on campus making use of McGill’s resources, particularly during the academic year.
To Apply: All applicants must be in contact with a full-time faculty member in the Faculty of Arts in advance to identify an appropriate supervisor for his or her work. The deadline to contact a proposed supervisor is Friday, October 30, 2009. Since each supervisor can only endorse one Mellon fellowship application, an application can only proceed once endorsement from a proposed supervisor has been obtained. Applicants will be notified of this decision by Friday, November 6, 2009.
Deadline for Completed Applications: November 23, 2009

Tomlinson Postdoctoral Fellowships 2009-2010
The Tomlinson Postdoctoral Fellowships are for new postdoctoral scholars accepted into a postdoctoral research position at any department at McGill University.
Value: $30,000, renewable annually based on satisfactory progress, to a maximum tenure of 2 years for postdoctoral level. Website

Departmental Deadline: 2 November 2009
[NOTE: Tomlinson Postdoctoral Fellowship Application and supporting documents should be sent to
Graduate Coordinator, History Dept., McGill University, Leacock 608, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 2T7]

Canadian residents who qualify for Social Science and Humantities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship can find more information at the website.

Residents of Quebec are also qualified to apply to Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture. Website

General information concerning McGill regulations and resources for postdoctoral scholars can be found at the Postdoctoral Website