The Nominating Committee
Funké Aladejebi
2020-2022
Funké Aladejebi is an Assistant Professor of History and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of New Brunswick.
Her work explores the intersections of identity and belonging for Black Canadian women in 20th Century Canada. Dr. Aladejebi is currently working on a manuscript titled, ‘Girl You Better Apply to Teachers’ College’: The History of Black Women Educators in Ontario, 1940s – 1980s, which explores the importance of Black Canadian women in sustaining their communities and preserving a distinct black identity within restrictive gender and racial barriers.
She has also published articles in Ontario History and Education Matters. And her research interests are in oral history, the history of education in Canada, black feminist thought and transnationalism.
Shannon Stunden Bower
2020-2022
Shannon Stunden Bower is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta. Previously, she was the Research Director at the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute. She completed her Ph.D. in Geography at the University of British Columbia in 2006.
In 2011, Stunden Bower published Wet Prairie: People, Land, and Water in Agricultural Manitoba, which won the Clio Prize in the Prairie Provinces from the Canadian Historical Association, the Manitoba Day Award from the Association for Manitoba Archives, and the K. D. Srivastava Prize (co-winner) from UBC Press. She has also published chapters in edited collections and articles in journals, including in Urban History Review, Environmental History and Agricultural History.
Stunden Bower is currently working on a book-length treatment of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, a Canadian federal government entity that drove change on the mid-20th century Canadian prairies. Stunden Bower also serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors for Evidence for Democracy, a national research and advocacy group promoting evidence-based decision-making and public interest research.
Brian Gettler is an historian of colonialism in Quebec and Canada and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Historical Studies and History at the University of Toronto. He has published articles in both French and English on among other things monetary space, on-reserve retail, Indigenous peoples and narratives of nation in Quebec, and the TRC’s historical research. His book, Colonialism’s Currency: Money, State, and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950 (published in June 2020), analyzes money as both a symbol around which discourses of appropriate behaviour and national character were articulated and as a concrete tool in the governance of peoples and lands. His current research explores public finance and Crown-First Nations fiscal relations as well as Indigenous participation in the credit economy of the St. Lawrence Valley, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Brian is a member of the Montreal History Group and sat on the board of directors of Recherches amérindiennes au Québec for nearly a decade.
I have a PhD in History from York University and am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Ryerson University. Up to now, my work has focused primarily on the histories of food, Indigenous health and the politics of settler colonialism. My current research, however, focuses specifically on the history of human biomedical experimentation on Indigenous peoples during the second half of the twentieth century.
Much of my work is interdisciplinary and collaborative and nature which is, perhaps, exemplified by my most recent co-authored book, Uncertain Harvest: The Future of Food on a Warming Planet (with Sarah Rotz and Evan Fraser), which was published by University of Regina Press 2020. I am also very much concerned with the intersections between history and public policy and have written extensively, for instance, on Canada’s progress towards meeting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action. This includes my work with Eva Jewell on the December 2020 Yellowhead Institute Special Report, Calls to Action Accountability: A 2020 Status Update on Reconciliation.