The CHA Executive

Colin Coates currently teaches Canadian Studies and History at the bilingual Glendon College campus of York University and is an award-winning historian of early French Canada as well as Canadian environmental and cultural history. His published works are too many to mention, but include the recent co-edited collections The Nature of Canada (UBC Press, 2019), Moving Natures: Mobility and the Environment in Canadian History (University of Calgary Press, 2016), Canadian Countercultures and the Environment (University of Calgary Press, 2016) and Introduction aux études canadiennes: histoires, identités, cultures (Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2012). Coates has also been a leading advocate for the field of Canadian Studies throughout his career and, to that end, is the Past President of the Canadian Studies Network-Réseau d’études canadiennes and was the director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies between 2011 and 2015.

Portfolio: The François-Xavier Garneau Prize

Martin Laberge is a professor of the history of international relations in the Department of Social Sciences at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, where he teaches European history and international relations. A specialist in the history of war and peace, his research examines the role of citizens and political and military decision-makers in reshaping the international system after World War I. His current research focuses on three areas: France and naval arms limitation in the 1920s; French political and strategic objectives in the Mediterranean in the 1930s; and France and the construction of the Canadian Vimy Memorial. He is also the recipient of the Christiane Melançon Award for Excellence in Teaching from UQO. He holds a PhD in history from the Université de Montréal.

Jo holds her doctorate in Canadian history from the University of Ottawa and teaches part-time at the university’s History department.  She teaches a diversity of Canadian and American undergraduate survey history courses and fourth year seminars that focus on archives, decolonization, gender, and material history. She has served as a Board Member of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and as a SSHRC program committee member. She is currently on the Board of the Costume Museum of Canada, is an active member of the CHA and its affiliated committees, and has supported the CHA Teaching Blog since it started. Her current academic research focuses on the ways historians and researchers can use hair to learn more about the construction of gender and growing up in a North American context.

Since 1987, Jo has worked as a researcher, historian and consultant in Ottawa, merging her knowledge of public and private research projects while maintaining ties, memberships and relationships with the academic community. She was the Executive Director of the Association of Canadian Archivists from 2017 to 2023 and will start as the Executive Director of the Canadian Council of Archives in August 2023.

Portfolios: Teaching Committee, Future of the CHA Annual Meeting

Jean-Michel Turcotte is Chief Historian at the Directorate of History and Heritage (DHH), Department of National Defence. Before moving to Ottawa, he completed a PhD in history at Université Laval in 2018, and thereafter, undertook postdoctoral fellowships in Berlin, Potsdam and Mainz in Germany. As a specialist of war and armed conflict, his research interests encompass the history of wartime captivity, humanitarianism, international humanitarian law and Canadian international and military history. At DHH, he is currently co-authors of the Official History of Canadian Military Observers in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, 1954-1973 as well as working on an Official History of Canadian Peace Support Operations, 1945-1971.

Daniel R. Meister is an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of History at St. Thomas University. A former Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, he researches the histories and politics of “race,” “whiteness,” immigration, and multiculturalism in Canada. His first book on these subjects, The Racial Mosaic (MQUP 2021), was shortlisted for the L.R. Wilson Best Book Award and the J.W. Dafoe Best Book Award and was named one of Quill and Quire’s “Books of the Year.” He is also the co-editor of Biography Across the Digitized Globe (Brill 2025). He has additionally published articles in Canadian Historical Review, Settler Colonial Studies, and Études canadiennes/Canadian Studies, as well as in popular venues such as The Walrus. Meister currently serves as the English-language co-editor of the CHA magazine, Intersections, and he has previously served on the program committee for the CHA’s annual meeting.