Director, Scholars, & Affiliates

Meet the Director

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). Her new book, Media and Cultural Memory in Britain and Ireland, from the 1688–1745 Revolution to the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, forthcoming in 2021 with Cambridge University Press, explores the articulation of sites of cultural memory within the context of a shifting media ecology of the 18th century. Her co-edited collection of essay, The International Companion to Scottish Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century is also forthcoming in 2021 (ASLS). 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 before assuming the role again in 2020. See more about Leith's research HERE.

Steering Committee Members

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. She is currently exploring conflicting articulations of masculinity during the Newfoundland seal hunt and related animal rights/welfare protests of the 1960s–1990s. You can contact Dr. Keough at wkeough@sfu.ca.

Dr. June Scudeler, Assistant Professor, Indigenous Studies

Dr. June Scudeler is an assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, cross-appointed with the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Her research examines the intersections between queer Indigenous studies, Indigenous literature, film, and art. She has published articles in Native American and Indigenous Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal,Canadian Literature, and Studies in Canadian Literature. Her chapters are included in Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics and Literature (University of Arizona Press) and Performing Indigeneity (Playwrights Canada Press). She is the co-editor of Studies in American Indian Literatures.

She is currently researching Indigenous representation in Fear the Walking Dead and Indigenous horror and science fiction literature and film, and writing a proposal for a book about Swampy Cree artist Kent Monkman.

Links to articles: https://sfu.academia.edu/JuneScudeler

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.

Scholars & Instructors

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.

Dr. Antone Minard is an instructor in the Department of Humanities and the Department of English at SFU. He received his PhD in Folklore and Mythology at UCLA with a focus on Celtic languages and literatures. Dr. Minard is the editor of The Celts: History, Life, and Culture, a two-volume encyclopedia published by ABC-Clio in 2012. Many of his courses on mythology and folk religion involve Scottish content (Celtic Mythology, Great Religious Texts, Religion in Context) and he has also taught courses on medieval Scottish history for SFU Continuing Studies.

Distinguished Affiliates

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.

(William) Rex Davidson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia to a Scottish father and an English mother. He was educated in Canada, Scotland, and England. Davidson had an eclectic working life. He was:

a history and archeology writer for a prominent English newspaper
a researcher for a Scottish journalist in Vancouver
a public affairs director for a major Canadian energy company
an owner and operator of two restaurants and an inn in B.C.’s lower mainland
a farmer with 4000 hogs in Ireland

Davidson has now retired to his home, gardens, dogs, and wood/metal-working shop on the Sunshine Coast, and to his second home in Tomatin, Scotland. He is a director and secretary of the St. Andrews Society of the City of Vancouver and a 40-year elected member of the Council of the Clan Chattan Association in Scotland, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland.

Hon. John Allen Fraser, PC, OC, OBC, CD, QC, is the former Member of Parliament for Vancouver South (1972–1993) and former Speaker of the House of Commons (1986–1993). During his 21 years in Parliament, Mr Fraser served in key government positions, including Minister of the Environment (1979–80) and Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (1984–85), prior to his election as Speaker (1986 and 1988). He was the first person in Canadian history to be elected Speaker of the House of Commons by his parliamentary peers, a practice first instituted in 1986. He is Honorary Chair of the Fundraising Council of the Centre for Scottish Studies.

Dr. Kevin James is Scottish Studies Foundation Chair & Professor of History at the University of Guelph. Kevin studied for his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, working with Professor R. J. Morris in the Department of Economic and Social History.

He is the author of Histories, Meanings and Representations of the Modern Hotel. Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2018; Tourism, Land and Landscape in Ireland: The Commodification of Culture. New York & London: Routledge, 2014; and Handloom Weavers in Ulster’s Linen Industry, 1815-1914. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007.

His teaching and research focuses on Ireland and Britain during the long 19th century, and also encompasses trans-national themes, such as travel, tourism, and the history of the modern hospitality sector. He focuses on the experiences of Scotland and Ireland, and interactions and comparisons between them.

His current research, drawing on old hotel books, explores the social and cultural history of the inn and hotel in Victorian Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England, and the Isle of Man. It extends his previous research programme, which examined "tourist development" projects in 19th-century Ireland and the intersections of gendered, racial, and class identities in Irish travel writing. He has longstanding interests in comparative modern Scottish and Irish social history and connections between them through tourism.

Ronald Sutherland is an associate member of the Centre and was one of the community founders of the Centre for Scottish Studies. He spent his working career in the international shipping industry and retired as President of the Empire Shipping Company. He has been active for many years with the Scots community in British Columbia and, especially, with the BC Pipers Association.

In Memoriam

Ronald MacLeod

Ronald MacLeod was a retired Director General of the Pacific and Freshwater Fisheries and an Officer of the Order of Canada. His father and mother were Gaelic-speaking émigrés from the Island of Raasay, Scotland. He was one of the community founders of the Centre for Scottish Studies and, in 2000, received the Chancellor's Distinguished Service Award for service to SFU.

Ian Ross

Ian Ross was an extremely accomplished scholar and founder of the international Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society. His major work was a biography of Adam Smith that was published by Oxford University Press (2nd ed., 2010). He was also a gifted teacher, a kind and generous colleague, and an inspiration to those who knew him.