Research Associates

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Directory of Research Associates

Name	Title	Faculty and/or Department	Email Address
Bonnell, Jennifer	Assistant Professor	Department of History	bonnellj@yorku.ca
Fernandes, Gilberto	Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow Lead Director, Portuguese Canadian History Project Coordinator, Toronto Migration Memory Collective	Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies	prtcan.history@gmail.com
Gekas, Sakis	Associate Professor Hellenic Heritage Foundation Chair in Modern Greek History	Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - Department of History	agekas@yorku.ca
Jenkins, William	Associate Professor	Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - Department of Geography	wjenkins@yorku.ca
Koffman, David	Assistant Professor	Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - Department of History	koffman@yorku.ca

Research Profiles and Biographies

Jennifer Bonnell
Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - Department of History
Education:

Jennifer Bonnell is a historian of public memory and environmental change in nineteenth and twentieth-century Canada. She is the author of Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don River Valley (University of Toronto Press, 2014) and the editor, with Marcel Fortin, of Historical GIS Research in Canada (University of Calgary Press, 2014). She is an executive member of the Network in Canadian History & Environment and a co-editor of their group blog, The Otter.

Research Interests: History of Environment and Biodiversity, Water and Urban Environments, Public History and Collective Memory

Visit: Primary Website and Secondary Website

Projects: Don Valley Historical Mapping Project www.maps.library.utoronto.ca/dvhmp/

Email: bonnellj@yorku.ca

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Gilberto Fernandes
Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow; Lead Director, Portuguese Canadian History Project; Coordinator, Toronto Migration Memory Collective

Education:
PhD - History (York University)
MA - History/ Ethnic, Migration and Pluralism Studies (University of Toronto)
HBA (Licenciatura) - Early Modern and Contemporary History (ISCTE, Lisbon)

Gilberto Fernandes is a postdoctoral fellow with the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University, Toronto, where he coordinates the Toronto Migration Memory Collective. His research focuses on the social, cultural and political history of diasporic communities in North America, particularly Lusophones. His doctoral dissertation was nominated for the Canadian Historical Association’s John Bullen Prize’s national competition and is currently undergoing peer review for publication with the University of Toronto Press. Fernandes is the co-founder and president of the Portuguese Canadian History Project, through which he has led an archival outreach campaign in that community and produced various public history initiatives and digital humanities resources.

Research Interests: Migration, ethnicity and race in North America and the Lusophone world; the making and maintenance of diasporic communities and identities; the intersection of (post)imperial, national and diasporic memory and heritage; transnational migrant communities as agents and venues for international relations; the mental geographies of Toronto's ethnic communities.

Visit: Portuguese Canadian History Project's website and twitter; Gilberto's personal blog and twitter

Email: prtcan.history@gmail.com

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Sakis Gekas
Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - Department of History

Education:
PhD (University of Essex)
MA (University of Essex)
BA (Ionian University)

Sakis Gekas is an Associate Professor and the Hellenic Heritage Foundation Chair in Modern Greek History at York University, Toronto. He has written on the Ionian Islands under British rule, on merchants and ports in the Mediterranean, and the economic history of nineteenth-century Greece. Sakis teaches courses on Greek History, Mediterranean History and the history of colonialism and a history of Greek migration in the 20th century. He is also the co-founded and co-director of the Greek Canadian History Project

Research interests: Economic and Social history of Greece and the British Mediterranean; Greek migration and Greek Canadian History

Visit: www.hellenicheritagefoundationchair.info.yorku.ca

Email: agekas@yorku.ca

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William Jenkins
Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - Department of Geography

Education:
PhD (University of Toronto)
MA (University College Dublin)
BA (University College Dublin)

William Jenkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and a member of the graduate programs in Geography and History at York University, Toronto. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has written on aspects of the historical geography of rural Irish communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and on the history of Irish immigrant communities in Canada and the United States. William teaches courses on Historical Geography, Urban Historical Geography, and North American Immigration, among others. His 2013 book, Between Raid and Rebellion: the Irish in Buffalo and Toronto 1867-1916 (McGill-Queen’s University Press) received awards from the American Committee for Irish Studies, the Canadian Historical Association, the Geographical Society of Ireland, and the Ontario Historical Society.

Research Interests: Historical geographies of Ireland and the Irish diaspora, North American urban history, history of Irish nationalism, political geographies of border regions

Email: wjenkins@yorku.ca

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David Koffman
Liberal Arts & Professional Studies - Department of History

Education:
PhD (New York University)

David Koffman is a historian of the modern Jewish experience specializing in 19th and 20th century Canada and the US. He is a core member of the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, and a co-editor of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies.

Research Interests: Jewish-Indigenous Relations, Religion / Medicine (circumcision), Ethnicity / Money

Email: koffman@yorku.ca

For any questions regarding this section please email robarts@yorku.ca