Guest Speakers 2024 | 2025 coming soon!

Dr. Carly Adams (she/her) is a professor, Board of Governors Research Chair, and Co-Director of the Centre for Oral History and Tradition at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. As a social historian and an advocate for oral history, Dr. Adams explores community, resiliency, and gender in her research, with a focus on sport and leisure experiences. She currently leads the Nikkei Memory Capture Project (http://nmcp.ca), with Dr. Darren Aoki, a community-based oral history project that explores the histories of Japanese Canadians in southern Alberta.

Dr. Darren J. Aoki is Associate Professor in World History and Oral History at the University of Plymouth, United Kingdom. His research interests include gender and sexuality in twentieth century Japan, and more recently, the history of the Japanese diaspora with a focus on oral history and digital storytelling. In 2011, Aoki initiated an oral history pilot project recording and exploring the memories of southern Alberta Nikkei (people of Japanese descent). This grew into the Nikkei Memory Capture Project (NMCP), a long-term community-based oral history project that was awarded a Social Science and Research Council of Canada Insight Grant (2019-2023) as well as other local grants.

Dr. Jenna Bailey is an award winning author, oral historian, and documentary filmmaker. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Lethbridge, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Oral History and Tradition (COHT) at the University of Lethbridge.   Jenna has worked on numerous community oral history projects including the multi-award winning Shiloh Centre for Multicultural Roots Project and the Coyote Flats Pioneer Village project, both of which won the Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Community Programming (2015, 2018).  Jenna is also the author of the best-selling book Can Any Mother Help Me? (Faber).

Elio Colavito (he/they) is a white transmasculine settler, interdisciplinary scholar, and PhD candidate in the Department of History with a collaborative specialization in Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. He is a public historian, oral historian, and digital humanist whose research centers transmasculine histories of care, mutual aid, and community formation in 20th-century Canada and the United States. With support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, University of Toronto, Elio works to make a usable past accessible to trans communities.

Francis First Charger is the University of Lethbridge’s Elder in Residence. He has graciously offered to attend our opening ceremonies on May 9^th to offer us a blessing.

Francis has served on many committees in the past 20 years including the Aboriginal Council of Lethbridge, the National First Nation’s Forestry Program, the Kainai First Nation /Blood Tribe steering committee for an economic impact study, and the Elder Committee and Board of Director for Opokaa’sin. He was also the special advisor to the former Lethbridge College President, Tracy Edwards.

Dr. Karen Flynn is the Terrance & Karyn Holm Endowed Professor in the Department of Population Health Nursing Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago, College of Nursing and director of the Midwest Nursing History Research Center. Her research lies at the intersection of Black feminist and diaspora studies; health and care work; nursing history, transnational mobilities with keen attention to race, gender, and equity. Her award-winning book Moving Beyond Borders: Black Canadian and Caribbean women in the African Canadian Diaspora (University of Toronto, 2011) is the first book length manuscript that examines the experiences of Black Canadian and Caribbean nurses and the transnational formation of the occupation.

Catherine Grant-Wata is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation focuses on the history of Jamaican culture and placemaking in Toronto, Canada and Birmingham, England 1948-1985. This research project reviews the ways in which Jamaican born black women in Toronto and Birmingham formed community connection and cohesion in the 20th century.

Dr. Holly Miowak Guise (Iñupiaq) is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. Her forthcoming monograph, “World War II in Alaska: Native Voices and History,” focuses on gender, Unangax̂ (Aleut) relocation and internment camps, Native activism/resistance, and Indigenous military service during the war. Her research methods bridge together archives, tribal archives, community-based research, and oral histories with Alaska Native elders and veterans. She is interested in the colonial/Indigenous relationship during war and social history.

Dr. Lianne Leddy is an Associate Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University and a member of Serpent River First Nation. Her research focuses on Indigenous history in what is now Canada, with a focus on land, gender, and historical methods. Leddy’s award-winning book, Serpent River Resurgence: Confronting Uranium Mining at Elliot Lake was published in 2022 by University of Toronto Press. Her work has appeared in the Canadian Historical Review, NAIS, Oral History Forum, and Herizons.

Dr. Kristina R. Llewellyn is Professor of Social Development Studies and History at the University of Waterloo. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. Her research addresses oral history, education, and equity. Dr. Llewellyn is the award-winning author of four books: Democracy's Angels: The Work of Women Teachers (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012), The Canadian Oral History Reader (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015), Oral History and Education: Theories, Dilemmas, and Practice (Palgrave, 2017), Oral History, Education, and Justice: Possibilities and Limitations for Redress and Reconciliation (Routledge, 2019).

Dr. Joshua Schwab Cartas is a mixed race Indigenous Binnizá-Austrian, father, filmmaker, and Indigenous language scholar activist and an assistant Professor at NSCAD born outside his ancestral community on the traditional and unneeded territory of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver). Also, for the last 18 years he has been an active member of a Zapotec media and cultural collective known as Binni Cubi based in his grandfather’s community of Ranchu Gubiña, Mexico.

Dr. Katrina Srigley (she/her) lives and works on lands protected by the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850. She is a Professor of History at Nipissing University, co-editor of the award-winning collection Beyond Women’s Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History (Routledge 2018) and author of the award-winning monograph Breadwinning Daughters (U of T 2010).

Darcy Tamayose is a PhD student in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought under the supervision of Drs. Carly Adams (UofL) and Darren Aoki (Plymouth University UK). Her study examines the Okinawan Canadian diaspora. Tamayose’s MA (History) thesis, supervised by Dr. Gideon Fujiwara, explored the kika nisei journey of Naoko Shimabukuro which spanned from southern Alberta to Hamahiga Island with focus on the Okinawan Canadian civilian frontline experience during the Second World War Battle of Okinawa.

Selly Thiam is a Senegalese- American journalist, filmmaker, radio producer and writer. She started her career reporting for National Public Radio in Chicago - this led to her producing for the Storycorps Oral history project in New York City and then becoming lead producer on the Storycorps Griot Initiative, which in partnership with National Public Radio broadcast the stories of African-Americans from across the United States.

Dr. Amy Tooth Murphy is Senior Lecturer in Oral History at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research interests include queer oral history theory and method, butch/femme identities and culture, post-war lesbian history and literature, and queer temporalities. Her current British Academy/Leverhulme-funded project, ‘Historicising Butch: Narrating Butch Lesbian Identity, 1950-Present’, is an examination of butch lived experience in the UK and US via oral history interviews.