Dr. Claudine Bonner (she/her) is the current Canada Research Chair in Racial Justice and African Diaspora Migration in Atlantic Canada, and an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Mount Allison University.

Her teaching focuses on issues of equity and racial justice. She is building a collaborative, multi-disciplinary network to improve our knowledge of the history of Black Canadian migration. Her current research explores early twentieth century African-Caribbean and Canadian migration networks.

Dr. Bonner served as the inaugural Vice Provost of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at Acadia University.

Her forthcoming publication "The Black Press: A Shadowed Canadian Tradition" is a collection of essays co-edited with Drs. Nina Reid-Maroney and Boulou Ebanda de B bèri. This collection, spanning the period from the 1850s to the early twentieth century, is the first in the field to bring together original historical and Communication Studies research that position pioneering Canadian Black journalists as effective intellectual activists.

Gül Çalışkan is Professor of Global Sociology at St. Thomas University, located on unceded Wolastoqey Territory (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada). She received her PhD in Sociology from York University, where her doctoral research focused on the diasporic citizenship practices of Turkish-background residents in Berlin, Germany. She joined the Department of Sociology at STU in 2013.

Gül’s research and teaching are grounded in postcolonial studies, postcolonial feminism, and narrative inquiry. Her work explores the intersections of migration, citizenship, racial justice, and global social inequalities, with a focus on how global processes shape everyday lived realities.

She is the author of Forging Diasporic Citizenship: Narratives from German-born Turkish Ausländer (UBC Press, 2023) and editor of Gendering Globalization, Globalizing Gender: A Postcolonial Approach (OUP, 2020). She also leads Promise of Home, a SSHRC-funded, community-based narrative research project focused on immigrant belonging and policy transformation in Fredericton.

She teaches a range of undergraduate courses, including: Sociology of Globalization; Globalization and Gender; Racialization and Indigeneity; Orientalism, Islamophobia, and Postcolonial Transgressions; Advanced Theory; Qualitative Methods; Research for Social Change.

Tobin LeBlanc Haley, PhD (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, co-director of the Housing, Mobilization and Engagement Research Lab and white settler who was born and raised in Wolastoqey territory.

She is a community-engaged social policy scholar with a primary focus on housing. Her research is largely directed by expressed community need and she is currently focussed on the implications of government decision making for people living at the intersection of housing precarity, poverty and disability, the urgent need for change and the possibilities for a more just future.

Dr. LeBlanc Haley is on the boards of the New Brunswick Media Co-op and the New Brunswick Coalition for Persons with Disabilities and is a founding member of the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants' Rights. In her spare time she enjoys community organizing, running and hanging out with her young children.

Gabe Hrynick is an archaeologist specializing in the study of coastal hunter-gatherers, especially their domestic and ritual structures and spaces, and their adaptations to changing coastal environments. He also is active in public archaeology and experiential education in archaeology. As director of the Northeastern Archaeological Survey, he has over a decade of community-engaged multi-disciplinary field research in the coastal Northeast.

Gabe is the co-author of The Archaeology of the Atlantic Northeast (University of Toronto Press, 2021) and the Bibliography of New Brunswick Archaeology: Works to 2022, and co-editor of The Far Northeast: 3,000 BP to Contact (Canadian Museum of History/University of Ottawa Press, 2022). He co-hosts an award-winning fortnightly podcast, the New Brunswick Archaeology Podcast.

Christine Lovelace currently serves as Academic Archivist and Head of UNB’s Archives & Special Collections, located in the Harriet Irving Library as part of UNB Libraries. UNB’s Archives holds papers related to the history of UNB, NB literary authors, and NB history. Archives & Special Collections also houses the Loyalist collection (microforms).

Previous to starting at UNB in 2016, she was a Senior Project Archivist with Library and Archives Canada and has held positions at institutions such as Acadia University, Mount Saint Vincent University, the International Monetary Fund, Columbia University, and the Nova Scotia Archives.

Christine holds a Master’s degree in Records and Archives Management from University College London (2001) and a BA in Music History from Carleton University (1990).

Dr Heidi MacDonald is Dean of Arts and Professor of History and Politics, University of New Brunswick Saint John with specializations in twentieth-century Canada, Atlantic Canada, the Great Depression, women religious (nuns), suffrage, and youth.

She recently published We Shall Persist: Women and the Vote in the Atlantic Provinces. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2023.

Her current book project is “On Hold? Youth and the Great Depression in Canada.”

From 1999 to 2018, Heidi was a member of the History Department at the University of Lethbridge and founding Director of the Centre for Oral History and Tradition.

Lachlan MacKinnon is the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) In Post-Industrial Communities at Cape Breton University.

His research examines the intersections of political economy, bodily health, and environmental changes wrought by deindustrialization.

He is the author of Closing Sysco (2020), which examines the history of work and industrial closure at the Sydney Steel Works in Nova Scotia.

His recent co-edited collection, Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century: Formations and Legacies of Industrial Capitalism, explores the history of capitalism and deindustrialization, with special focus on settler-colonialism, environment and ecology, labour and occupational health and state policy.

Heather Millar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick.

She is the author of Fracking Uncertainty (2024, UTP), a comparative study of provincial hydraulic fracturing regulation in Canada, including New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Her current research examines the intersection of energy and climate politics, focusing on the role of narratives in shaping policy learning and feedback in subnational jurisdictions.

Joanne Owuor is a seasoned advocate for economic, social, and racial justice with 19 years of experience in community work. She has spent over a decade designing and implementing programs for underrepresented immigrant children, youth, and families.

A big-picture thinker with an eye for detail, Joanne is passionate about moving institutions toward racial equity through advocacy, education, and community building.

Her expertise includes developing culturally inclusive programs and policies, delivering cultural competency training, and leading anti-oppressive strategies.

Joanne has served on multiple committees and working groups in social work, mental health, and Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs), where she has led multi-sectoral teams to create inclusive services.

Ajay Parasram is a transnational multigenerational byproduct of the British empire, learning to live an unsettled life in Kjipuktuk, Mi'kma'ki.

He is an Associate Professor in the departments of History, International Development Studies, and Political Science at Dalhousie University.

Ajay's research centres the colonial present, or the many ways through which historical colonial encounters continue to exert structural pressure on the limits of freedom and decolonization in the present and future.

His most recent monograph, Pluriversal Sovereignty and the State: Imperial Encounters in Sri Lanka (Manchester UP, 2023) is the recipient of the 2024 International Theory Prize from the Centre for Advanced International Theory (University of Sussex) and the 2025 Global Development Studies of the International Studies Association's Best Book Prize.
Learn more about Ajay Parasram

Angela Tozer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Studies who specialises in Canadian history with a focus on the 19th century.

Her research explores the relationship between capitalism and settler colonialism, and she works to build respectful professional relationships that prioritise a holistic approach to the study of the Canadian settler state that does not exclusively focus on archival and colonial documentation.

It is important to Angela to balance between archival and oral history, and she work with both Indigenous and settler community members.

Natasha Simon is the daughter of Cecilia Powers (Francis) and grand-daughter of Lillian Francis’oq.

She is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education and the Mi’kmaq-Wolastoqey Centre at UNB.

Her current research centres on the special significance of nugumijg (grandmothers) in Mi’kmaq culture and on the life and work of her own great grandmother, Isabella Simon, who was a healer, midwife, and basket maker from Elsipogtog.

Natasha’s other research and supervisory interests include justice for Indigenous peoples, Aboriginal title, the Peace and Friendship Treaties, the history of systemic racism and police violence against Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous research methodologies.

Dr. Lee Windsor teaches and supervises in the history of warfare in the modern world.

His research interests centre on the Canadian Armed Forces role in multi-national coalition operations around the globe, during the two world wars and as well as United Nations and NATO operations in the Former Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Afghanistan.

He holds a BA from Acadia University, an MA from Wilfrid Laurier and a PhD from the University of New Brunswick.

He is part of the Gregg Centre team that delivers Field Study Programs in Sicily and Italy and our War and the Canadian Experience Teachers Professional Development Program in France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Vivian is a SSHRC-funded MA history student at UNB Fredericton. She holds a BA in history from Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax.

Having grown up in the Maritimes and worked in the heritage sector in Nova Scotia, Vivianenjoys researching Atlantic Canadian history.

Her MA thesis situates the Green Gables Farmhouse as a symbol of white settler Canadian identity.

Graham Nickerson serves on the boards of various organizations, including the New Brunswick Black History Society and the Black Loyalist Heritage Society.

In 2022, the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission recognized Graham as a future leader. In 2023, Graham was invited to lead Social Justice, Belonging, and Anti-Racism investigations as part of the National Trust for Canada’s Heritage Reset.

Graham is pursuing a PhD in history at UNB, and his dissertation is titled, “To Be Made Majesties Of...:’ Black Loyalist Agency in the Maritime Provinces.”

This research was awarded the United Empire Loyalist Association’s research scholarship and his essay “The Negro Settlements” was recently accepted as part of Charmaine A Nelson’s A Time, a Place, Our Gaze: Re-framing the Subaltern, in Black Maple Magazine.

Written in the Waves Journal is an online journal founded by graduate students at McMaster University: Sarah Perry (PhD Candidate, History) and Annabelle Silva (MA Student, Anthropology).

While Sarah and Annabelle examine different regions within the Atlantic, they are similarly interested in engaging with previous historical narratives and their impact on the marginalized, ignored communities of the Atlantic.

The main purpose of WiW is to not only provide an opportunity for students to share their research, but we are especially interested in uplifting the voices of women and BIPOC: to share their interpretations and perspectives on a history that has been previously dominated by the white, Eurocentric male view.

Leah Grandy holds a PhD in History and has and has been working in libraries and archives for twenty years and regularly assists historical researchers of all kinds.

She has previously been a member of the Board of Kings Landing and the Journal of New Brunswick Studies and is currently on the Board of the York-Sunbury Historical Society, who operate the Fredericton Region Museum.

Leah has been involved in a number of digital history projects such as the New Brunswick Loyalist Journeys story maps, Atlantic Loyalist Connections blog, and the New Brunswick Historical Newspapers Project.

Robert Tay-Burroughs is a former political advisor at the New Brunswick legislature and the former senior advisor to New Brunswick’s so-called commissioner on systemic racism.

His PhD research at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John) looks at how Canada’s core democratic and governing institutions come into conflict with treaty obligations. He lives in Fredericton, near Sitansisk.

Victoria (Tori) MacBeath is a PhD student in the Art History department at Concordia University. She holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from McMaster University.

Victoria's SSHRC-funded doctoral research considers how crafted objects act as materializations of a feminist ethics of care in rural New Brunswick. In doing so, her project tackles themes of decolonization, labour history, language politics, marginalized communities and histories of making, and place- and identity-making.

Victoria is actively involved in the arts community in Montreal, serving as a PhD Representative on the Art History Graduate Student Association, and a student representative on the Doc-Inter Student Committee. She is a member of the Textiles & Materiality Research Cluster and co-organizes a mending-related monthly speaker series.

Victoria’s research interest in labour histories has also manifested in community work, serving on the bargaining committee for the Concordia Research and Education Worker’s Union.

I am a SSHRC and ISER-funded MA Student (Thesis) in Political Science at Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador. At Memorial, I am working as a Graduate Assistant with Transforming Climate Action (TCA), a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary research project. My research with TCA is focused on climate-induced displacement in Atlantic Canada.

My own research touches on similar themes, focusing more specifically on issues of climate justice in relation to coastal erosion in New Brunswick's coastal communities.

In my thesis project, I first examine the political economy and environmental impacts of proposed nation building projects, such as the Sisson Mine and long-standing industry, such as the Irving Oil Refinery, before providing an ethnography of the impacts of coastal erosion.

I am working to argue that, as a consequence of climate change, a phenomenon caused by GHG emissions and related environmental consequences, we can see coastal erosion as a form of distributive, procedural and recognitional justice as well as a manifestation of slow violence.