Speakers
The CITC Conference features distinguished speakers in Irish and Canadian history, Indigenous-Crown relations, and Irish literature and culture.
Donald H. Akenson
Don Akenson is the A.C. Hamilton Distinguished University Professor & Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History, at Queen’s University. He took his first degree in economics at Yale and then studied Irish History with John V. Kelleher, the founder of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literature at Harvard. He has written several books on Irish history, on the Irish diaspora, and on scholarly topics in religious history. Some of these have received major prizes, and he has been awarded half a dozen honorary degrees. He feels strongly that the field of modern Irish history needs to be inclusive in scope and should avoid the covert sectarianism that at one time limited the appreciation of the culture’s complex and fascinating character.
Heidi Bohaker
Heidi Bohaker is an Associate Professor & Associate Chair, Undergraduate, Department of History, at the University of Toronto. She investigates on the history of Indigenous-Crown relations, treaties and federal and provincial government policies toward Indigenous peoples in Canada. She is a Director of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in treaty history, the history of residential schools in Canada and Canadian legal history. She is also a practitioner of the digital humanities, exploring how to best use new technologies in collaboration with Great Lakes First Nations to reconnect communities with aspects of their cultural heritage stored in museums and archives around the world, through GRASAC, the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures, of which she is a co-founder and current co-director, with Professor Cara Krmpotich.
Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo
Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo is the June Callwood Professor of Social Justice, an Assistant Professor of Theology (Teaching Stream) and Special Advisor on Indigenous Initiatives at Victoria University. He teaches about the Residential School System; Indigenous and Church relationships; Indigenous identity and Worldviews. He is from Kahnawake, a Mohawk community outside of Montreal.
William Jenkins
William Jenkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at York University, Toronto, where he teaches courses on the histories of modern Ireland and North American immigration. He is the author of Between Raid and Rebellion: the Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1867-1916 (2013) and the editor of the forthcoming collection entitled Canada and the Great Irish Famine, to be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Since 2021, he has served as president of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies.
S. Karly Kehoe
Karly Kehoe is a Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Communities at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. She explores Irish and Scottish settler colonialism and how religious minority migrants acquired and exercised colonial privilege in the north Atlantic world. She co-edits the Histories of the Scottish Atlantic book series with Edinburgh University Press, is convenor of the Scottish Historical Review Trust, and is board chairperson of the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies. Her latest monograph is Empire and Emancipation: Scottish and Irish Catholics at the Atlantic Fringe, (2022).
Mark G. McGowan
Mark G. McGowan is a Professor of History and Celtic Studies at the University of Toronto and is Principal & Vice-President Emeritus (2002-11; 2020-22) of the University of St. Michael’s College. He is the author and editor of twelve books and numerous articles on the Catholic Church in Canada, Irish migration and settlement in Canada, and the Great Irish Famine. His Finding Molly Johnson: Irish Famine Orphans in Canada, will be published this summer.
Christopher Morash
Christopher Morash is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin. He has published widely on Irish literature and culture, with books including Dublin: A Writer’s City (2023), Yeats on Theatre (2021), Mapping Irish Theatre [with Shaun Richards] (2014), and A History of the Media in Ireland (2009), and A History of Irish Theatre (2002). He was Vice-Provost of TCD (2016-2019), curated the online Unseen Plays series for the Abbey Theatre (2021), and has been a Member of the Royal Irish Academy since 2008.
Paul G. Murphy
Paul G. Murphy is a Research Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Blockchain and Governance at The Digital Economist. He was a Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley with the Smart Village Movement and is a board member of the Association science et bien commun, the Canadian Association for Irish Studies, and the Canadian Irish Migration Preservation Network.
Áine O’Flynn
Áine O’Flynn is a final-year History PhD student in the University of Galway. She has a BA in in English and History and an MA in History from the same university. Her research is focused on health and disease in Ireland and Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century.
Deirdre Raftery
Deirdre Raftery is Full Professor (History of Education) at University College Dublin, where she contributes to research at both national and international levels. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She held an Ireland Canada University Foundation Award (2014) to conduct research at the Loretto Archives in Toronto, and a Fulbright at Boston College (2015) to work on the education of the Irish Catholic diaspora in the nineteenth century. She co-edited History of Education (Taylor & Francis) for five years. Recent monographs include Irish Nuns and Education in the Anglophone World: a Transnational History (2023), and Teresa Ball and Loreto Education: Convents and the Colonial World, 1794-1875 (2022). Jointly authored works include The Benedictine Nuns and Kylemore Abbey, a History (2020), and Nano Nagle, the Life and the Legacy (2019).
Duke Redbird
Duke Redbird is an Elder from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, on the shores of Lake Huron. A celebrated Indigenous Visionary as well as an established public intellectual, poet, broadcaster, and filmmaker, He is an Elder and Advisor to various public and private organizations, and his online presence brings his breadth of cultural knowledge and artistic practice to the benefit of a global audience. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at St. Michael’s College.
Pa Sheehan
Pa Sheehan is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the University of Toronto – University of St. Michael’s College. He has taught courses in Irish language, Irish literature, Irish sport, Celtic Mythology, Traditional Music and Celtic manuscripts. He is also the founder of the College’s first GAA-supported co-ed hurley team.
Rankin Sherling
Rankin Sherling has a PhD from Queen’s University (Kingston), where he was supervised by Donald Harman Akenson. His first book, The Invisible Irish: Finding Protestants in the Nineteenth-Century Migrations to America was published in 2016 by McGill-Queen’s University Press. He has taught history at the Military College of Alabama for the last 10 years, the University of Alabama for the last two, and has just begun a new position at the University of Mississippi.
Dr. Laura J. Smith
Dr. Laura J. Smith is a historian of the Irish in Canada. She is a historical consultant for the Canada Ireland Foundation, and an administrator at the University of Toronto. Her work concerns Irish Catholic religion and politics in Upper Canada as well as emigrant management in the Canadas during the Irish Famine. She is the president of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association.
Elizabeth (Liz) Smyth
Elizabeth (Liz) Smyth is Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto. She is a Fellow of the University of St Michael’s College and Massey College. She continues to research the engagement of Canadian women religious in education, social service and health care, focusing on the intersection of class, ethnicity, gender, and transnationalism.
Annie Tindley
Annie Tindley is Professor of British and Irish History at Newcastle University and writes on modern land issues, including reform, use and ownership, in Britain, Ireland and the British Empire.
David A. Wilson
David A. Wilson is a Professor in the Celtic Studies Program and History Department at the University of Toronto, and the General Editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada he has published and edited a dozen books, including a prize-winning two-volume biography of Thomas D’Arcy McGee. His most recent work, Canadian Spy Story: Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police, was co-winner of the Champlain Society’s Chalmers Award and winner of the C.P. Stacey Prize in Canadian military history.
Darin Wybenga
Darin Wybenga worked in Independent Schools in Southern Ontario for twenty years a teacher, vice-principal, curriculum writer, and curriculum coordinator. A member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, he now works as their Traditional Knowledge and Land Use Coordinator in the Department of Consultation and Accommodation where he educates project proponents and other parties about the history of the First Nation, its treaties, and its lands. In his spare time, Darin is an avid reader of Canadian history and enjoys compiling his family’s genealogy.