Degree(s) and Education:
PhD (University of Toronto)
Specialization:
Indigenous history, colonialism, religious history, Canadian history
Office:
Ferrier, Room 332
Mailing Address:
Department of History and Classical Studies
McGill University
855 rue Sherbrooke O
Montréal, Québec H3A 2T7
Email Address:
nicholas.may [at] mcgill.ca
Professional Biography
Nicholas May is an anthropological historian of indigenous Canada. His focus to date has been on religious and cultural transformation in British Columbia. This interest led him to work with the Nisga’a to write a history of their encounter with Protestant mission Christianities that began in the mid nineteenth century. This project, his dissertation, drew on Nisga’a perspectives of the historical religious changes they experienced as a result of this meeting, and won the Canadian Historical Associations’ John Bullen Prize in 2014. A revised version of this study is being prepared for publication with University of British Columbia Press.
May’s current research project is a study of indigenous logging on BC’s north coast in the century after 1885. It flows out of his interest in the changing relationships between worldview and experience, relationships between people and their environment, as well as questions that arose during his interviews with contemporary Nisga’a. Using the experiences of three local First Nations—the Haida, Nisga’a, and Gitxsan—this study aims to deepen our understanding of the larger histories of capitalism, the environment, and alternative modernities with which they intersect.