Dr. Leith Davis, Professor, English

Dr. Leith Davis is the author of Acts of Union: Scotland and the Negotiation of the British Nation (Stanford UP, 1998) and Music, Postcolonialism and Gender: The Construction of Irish Identity, 1724–1874 (Notre Dame UP, 2005) and numerous articles on 18th- and 19th-century British culture as well as co-editor of Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004) and Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture (Ashgate, 2012). She is currently working on a monograph entitled Media and Cultural Memory in Britain and Ireland, 1688–1745 which explores the articulation of what Pierre Nora calls "spectacular" sites of cultural memory within the context of a shifting media ecology of the 18th century. In addition, with Janet Sorensen, she is co-editing the International Companion to Scottish Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century. She is a co-founder of the Department of English's MA with Specialization in Print Culture and served previously as Director of Simon Fraser University's Scottish Studies Centre from 2008–2015.

Dr. Willeen Keough, Professor, History

Dr. Willeen Keough is a Simon Fraser University professor in the Department of History. She is also a former Chair of the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies (GSWS). Dr. Keough received her PhD from Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland, and joined SFU in 2005. Her doctoral dissertation received the American Historical Association's Gutenberg-e Prize in 2003 and was published in 2006 by Columbia University Press as The Slender Thread: Irish Women on the Southern Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, 1750-1860. She has also authored numerous articles and co-written Gender History: Canadian Perspectives with Dr. Lara Campbell. You can contact Dr. Keough at wkeough@sfu.ca

Dr. Aaron Windel, Associate Professor, History

Dr. Aaron Windel is an associate professor in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University. He researches the political and social history of modern Britain, the British empire, the history of media and technology, rural economics, and colonial development. His book project traces the path that brought the cooperative movement into the centre of British colonial development and its spectacle of community-driven rural modernization during the last decades of colonial rule. 

Dr. Niall MacKenzie’s PhD, supervised at Cambridge by the late Howard Erskine-Hill, offered the first critical examination of the monastic death bill as a literary genre. There and elsewhere, his work has often sought to untangle the secrets of the Jacobite cause, and his concept of “double-edged writing” has had some influence in the field. His publications have appeared in various journals and edited collections, including: The Review of English Studies, The Byron Journal, Studia Neophilologica, Scottish Language, Scottish Gaelic Studies, Scottish Studies Review, and Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies. He has also collaborated with visual artists, Anna Gaskell and Sally Mann.

A grandson of the tradition bearer, Kate MacKenzie (Caitrìona Uilleim Iain mhic Artair, 1876-1979), Niall taught in 2011 a version of ENGL 357 that focused on literary and pop-cultural images of Cape Breton Island. The book thereby inspired is nearing its completion.

Mike Chisholm is the executive director of the United Scottish Cultural Society in Vancouver, B.C. The Society is an amalgamation of Scottish societies in Vancouver. It was formed in the 1950’s and today continues to perpetuate Scottish culture in all its forms, including language, music, dance, and education.

The most prominent activity is ScotFestBC: The British Columbia Highland Games, which celebrated its 88^th year in 2019. As executive director, Mike is responsible for overall coordination of the Games, including a 40-person organizing committee and a volunteer corps of close to 200. Born in Antigonish, the heart of an early Highland settlement in Nova Scotia in the 19^th century, Mike’s Highland roots run deep as the fourth generation of his Chisholm family in Nova Scotia.

Mike is the official piper to Rocky Mountaineer Rail Tours in Vancouver, is a director with the BC Pipers’ Association, and is a retired member of a number of BC pipe bands. He also works in the B.C. film industry and is a former news reporter with the CBC, CTV, Global BC, and the Vancouver Observer.