I am a Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS) at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada), where I have also served as Department Chair, Graduate Chair, Undergraduate Chair, Associate Dean (Undergraduate Programming, Teaching and Learning, and Student Experience) and Dean pro tem in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. I am on sabbatical until January 2026.
I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Canadian women’s and gender history, histories of social protest, the history of the 1960s, feminist theory, and gender studies. I am co-organizer of Vancouver’s Café Minerva. I am currently accepting graduate students interested in Canadian women’s and gender history.
Research and Publications
My past research explored the impact of unemployment in the Great Depression on family life and masculinity; the emergence of the gendered welfare state; and survival strategies adopted by poor and unemployed families. My current research is on the history of the Vietnam war and the transnational and gendered politics of the draft resistance and antiwar movements in North America, the women’s suffrage movement, and histories of feminist activism. I co-edited a collection on the emotional history of second wave feminism in Canada with Catherine Gidney and Michael Dawson. My 2020 book on the history of the suffrage movement in British Columbia received the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Book Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia and the Canadian Historical Association Clio Prize for British Columbia.
I was awarded the Dean’s Medal for Excellence in Academic research, teaching, and service (Simon Fraser University, 2015); the National Capital Committee on the Scholarship, Preservation and Dissemination of Women’s History, Marion Dewar Prize, 2011 [Outstanding scholar based on record of research, teaching and administrative work]; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Cormack Teaching Award, 2010-11; and Honourable Mentions from the Canadian Historical Association (2010) and the Canadian Women’s Studies Association (2011) for Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression (UTP, 2009).
- Heroes, Havens, Cowards: Gender and the Politics of Vietnam Antiwar Resistance (In Progress)
- Affect and Activism: Second Wave Feminism and the History of Emotions. Edited with Catherine Gidney and Michael Dawson. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022.
- A Great Revolutionary Wave: Women and the Vote in British Columbia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2020.
- Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2016). Co-edited with Tamara Myers and Adele Perry.
- Worth Fighting For: War Resistance in Canadian History from 1812 to the War on Terror Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2015. Co-edited with Catherine Gidney and Michael Dawson.
- Gender History: Canadian Perspectives (Oxford: 2014). Co-authored with Willeen Keough
- Debating Dissent: Canada and the 1960s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012). Co-edited with Dominique Clément and Greg Kealey.
- Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario’s Great Depression (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).
Upcoming/Recent Talks
(On hold due to Covid): Café Minerva is a free gender and women’s history group which holds events in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is organized by Dr. Willeen Keough (Department of History, Simon Fraser University) and Dr. Lara Campbell (Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, SFU). We hold about four free events per year at different locations around the city. Check out our website at http://cafeminerva.weebly.com and follow us on twitter @Cafe_Minerva