Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Benjamin Isitt, BA, MA, PhD, LLB

Email: Ben@Isitt.ca

Research Areas

Modern Canadian history; social movements and the state in Canada and the world; legal history and comparative labour relations; British Columbia and the Canadian West; comparative social democracy; Canadian political history; Canadian-Russian relations; digital scholarship and public history.

Courses Taught

HIST 132 History of Canada Since 1867
HIST 303 The Canadian West
HIST 3332 The Canadian Worker Since 1914
HIST 358 British Columbia Since 1945
HIST 402 Problems in International Relations: History of the Peace Movement
HIST 469 Social Movements in World History
HIST 490 Labour and the Left in British Columbia

Brief Biography

I specialize in Canadian and world history, with particular emphasis on social movements and the state in the twentieth century. I hold a PhD from the University of New Brunswick and have written two books, From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s Siberian Expedition, 1917-19 (Vancouver: UBC Press) and Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). My research has also appeared in journals including the Canadian Historical Review and Canadian Journal of Political Science. I have travelled extensively, to more than 50 countries on five continents, establishing ongoing collaborative relationships with scholars in Europe, Asia, and North America. I have employment and volunteer experience in journalism, government, and the non-profit sector.

My research agenda reflects these broad experiences. My monograph From Victoria to Vladivostok builds on an award-winning journal article that employed the method of micro-history to illuminate turbulent social relations during the First World War. This led to further transnational research on Canada’s forgotten Siberian Expedition of 1918-19, providing a rare dialogue between social history, military history, and the history of international relations. Engaging digital scholarship, the Siberian Expedition Virtual Exhibition and Digital Archive brings this history to life for students, teachers, and the public. My second monograph, Militant Minority, combines oral history and “horizontal history,” examining diverse responses within British Columbia’s postwar working class to changing economic and social conditions. I am now completing a SSHRC-funded study of the interaction between workers and environmentalists, examining how competing claims to diminishing natural resources impacted British Columbia’s social democratic political tradition.

Books

From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s Siberian Expedition, 1917-19 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010)

Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011)

Iz Viktorii vo Vladivostok: Kanadskaja jekspedicija v Sibiri, 1917-19. Vladivostok: Korpus Company, 2012. (in press)

Globalization on the Resource Frontier: Workers, Environmentalists and the British Columbia New Democratic Party, 1972-2001 (in progress)

Curriculum Vitae

Search