Dr. Greer and grad student publish together

Congratulations to Dr. Kirsten Greer, Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Histories and Geographies, and Sonje Bols, Master of Environmental Studies / Master of Environmental Sciences student, on the publication of their article on the ornithological activities of Swedish immigrant, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence (1894-1992), who settled at Pimisi Bay, Ontario, in 1927.The paper, titled She of the Loghouse Nest’: Gendering Historical Ecological Reconstructions in Northern Ontario, is published in Historical Geography 2016, Volume 44.
The article brings together feminist historical geography with historical ecology as a means to integrate gender as a category of analysis when conducting historical ecological reconstructions. Northern Ontario’s ecological past can be discovered in the vast natural history collections housed in museums across North America and the United Kingdom. Natural history specimens reveal important scientific information about past habitats, climates, and ranges and distributions of species. However, while such cumulative data have been crucial to works in historical ecological reconstructions, the ways in which such gendered knowledge has been produced and circulated remains under studied. Their paper demonstrates how de Kiriline Lawrence gained authority in the field through the domestic sphere of her Loghouse Nest home. Her expertise included the breeding behaviours of birds, such as courtship, nesting habits, and rearing of the young, areas deemed suitable for women in the first half of the twentieth century. De Kiriline Lawrence’s natural history specimens, therefore, can also be conceptualized as cultural artefacts reflective of gendered situated knowledges, an important consideration when engaging in critical historical ecological reconstructions of past environments.