Dr. Steven High

Research Profile

Steven High is an award-winning historian whose research on the structural violence of deindustrialization has put Canada at the centre of important global conversations about what a "just transition" might look like after past failures. His use of oral history ensures that his interpretation is grounded in the lives of working people. He has published many books and articles on this topic, including Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence and Class (2022) and Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America's Rust Belt (2003). His next book, The Left in Power: Bob Rae's NDP and the Working Class, to be released in February 2025, considers how social democrats responded to the unfolding industrial crisis. He is currently leading a large transnational project investigating the politics of deindustrialization (see the website: deindustrialization.org).

His second area of expertise involves the methodology, theory and ethics of oral history, particularly as it relates to mass violence. Steven High co-founded Concordia's Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS) and led the prize-winning Montreal Life Stories project from 2005 until 2012, where he worked in close partnership with survivor groups. He authored or co-edited a number of books and articles out of this project, including Oral History at the Crossroads: Sharing Stories of Displacement and Survival

Finally, Steven High has published extensively on race and empire in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the British Caribbean during the Second World War. This research includes a monograph, Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere (2009) and an edited collection, Occupied St. John's: A Social History of a City at War (2010).

Steven High has been awarded the J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal by the Royal Society of Canada (2024), le Prix du livre politique de la Présidence de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec (2023), le Prix Lionel-Groulx pour le meilleur ouvrage sur un aspect de l’histoire de l’Amérique française (2023), the Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media (2020), the Fred Landon Award awarded by the Ontario Historical Society (2019), the Clio-Québec (2023, 2015) and Clio-Ontario (2019) book prizes from the Canadian Historical Association, the John Porter Memorial Book Prize awarded by the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association (2004), Raymond Klibansky Book Prize from the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences (2004), and the Albert B. Corey Book Prize from the American Historical Association (2004). He also received a Certificate of Achievement & Lifetime Membership from the US Oral History Association (2018). 

He served as President of the Canadian Historical Association from 2021-23.

Education

B.A. University of Ottawa, M.A. Lakehead University (Thunder Bay), Ph.D. University of Ottawa

Supervised Students and Postdoctoral Fellows

Post-Doctoral Fellows:

Camille Robert, January 2025-, FRQSC, «Mobilisations associatives et syndicales des infirmières d’origine caribéenne et philippine face aux discriminations raciales dans les hôpitaux québécois (1973 - 1993) »

Florence Darveau-Routhier, September 2024-present, FRQSC, « Archiver la ville vécue: histoire au présent d’un Sherbrooke en luttes. »

Désirée Rochat, January 2023-present, FRQSC, “Community Archiving as Ethnography: Historicizing the Grassroots Heritage Activism of Black Canadians"

Indranil Chakraborty, September 2021-August 2023, Horizon, “Bankruptcy, Sears, and the experience of displaced department store workers.”

Mathieu Aubin, January 2020-2021, Horizon, Co-Supervision with Jason Camlot, “Oral Literary History in the Spoken Web Project.”

Samuel Mercier, September 2019-2021, FRQSC, Co-Supervision with Jason Camlot, “Une histoire audiotextuelle des événements de poésie à Montréal (1960-1990).”

Lana Dee Povitz, January 2017-August 2018, SSHRC, “A Slow Burn: Activist Lives after Women’s Liberation and AIDS.”

Marie Lavorel (2018-2019). Horizon Postdoctoral Fellowship, “Oral History and Web Mapping.” [co-supervised with Sébastien Caquard, Geography]

Stéphane Martelly, 2015-2017, FRQSC Research-Creation, “Penser et créer depuis le lieu de ce silence. Élaborations de l’oeuvre absente et possible à partir des « histoires de vie » de Montréalais déplacés par la violence (Haïti-Québec).”

Lilia Topouzova, 2015-2017, SSHRC, “The Bulgarian Gulag: Survivors Remember.”

Amanda Ricci, 2016, FRQSC – Montreal History Group, “Oral History and the ‘Long’ Women’s Movement in Montreal.”

Karoline Truchon, 2014-2016, SSHRC, “La mixité sociale pour qui, comment et avec quelles impacts? Témoignages audio-visuels croisés à Toronto et à Nouvelle-Orléans.” 

Julie Perrone, 2014-15, SSHRC, “The Franklin Project,” Co-supervised with Peter Gossage.

Hourig Attarian, 2011-13, FQRSC, SSHRC, "'On Being Melez': Intergenerational Life Stories of Armenian Women."

Stacey Zembrzycki, 2010-12, SSHRC, “Professionalizing Survival: The Politics of Public Memory among Holocaust Survivor-Educators.” Winner of the Oral History Association Book Award. 

Anna Sheftel, 2010-11, FQRSC, “Negotiating Family Narrative of Atrocity and Genocide.” Winner of the Oral History Association Book Award.

PhD Students:

Samia Dumais, In Progress, History PhD, « Ancrer le passé dans le présent : pédagogie et récits en histoire afro-
canadienne dans le cursus scolaire québécois (1967-1990). »

Graham Latham, In Progress, History PhD, "Maybe we led them here’: Resistance and complicity in gentrifying Mile End, Montreal"

Lauren Laframboise, In Progress (ABD), History PhD, “The gendered pathways of decline: Lived experiences of deindustrialization in Montreal and New York’s garment industries.”

Kelann Currie-Williams, In Progress (ABD), Humanities PhD, “The Aurality of Images: Photographic Life Stories of Black Canada.”

Naomi Frost, In Progress (ABD), History PhD, "Remembering Democratic Kampuchea: Transgenerational Memory in the Cambodian Post-Genocide Diaspora"

Tom MacMillan, In Progress (ABD), History PhD, “The Struggle Within: Transnational Labor Unions and the Left in the United States and Canada (1880-1955)"

Derek Garcia, In Progress (ABD), PhD History, "The Borders of Knowledge: Voicing Educational Activism at the Colegio Jacinto Treviño, 1969-1976."

Eliot Perrin, In Progress (ABD), PhD History, "Flour Mill se fane?:Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal in Sudbury’s Francophone Quarter."

Laurence Hamel-Roy, In Progress (ABD), PhD Humanities, "Luttes à l’assurance chômage au Québec 1971-."

Aude Maltais-Landry, 2023, Education PhD, USherbrooke “L’inclusion de perspectives autochtones au cours d’Histoire du Québec et du Canada: points de vue d’enseignants, d’élèves et d’historiens.” [Sabrina Moisan]

Piyusha Chatterjee, 2022, PhD INDI, “ 'We were always here': The Labour of Busking and its Disappearing Spaces in Montreal."

Carmen Ruschiensky, 2022, PhD Humanities (ABD), SSHRC, "Translating Cultural Memory: Migration and Mediations of Contemporary Québécois Literature." [Main Supervisor: Sherry Simon]

Fred Burrill, 2021, PhD History, “Heritages of Struggle and Dispossession in Saint-Henri, 1970-2016."

Lisa Ndejuru, 2021, PhD INDI, "Honoring Story: Speaking, Listening, Creating in the Aftermath of Violence."

Zeina Ismael Allouche, 2021, INDI PhD, "Forced separation from the biological family as perceived by transracial/ transnational adoptees and accounting for the forced separation of Indigenous children in Canada." [Main Supervisor: Elizabeth Fast]

Linda FitzGibbon, 2019, PhD INDI,“The memory work of an Irish Seniors Group in Ottawa.” (Main Supervisor: Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin)

Laurence Parent, 2019, Humanities PhD, “Rouler/Wheeling Montréal: Moving through, Resisting and Belonging in an Ableist City."

Nadia Hausfather, 2017, Humanities PhD, “Ghosts in our corridors: Emotional Experiences of Participants in Quebec's General Unlimited Student Strike Campaigns (2005-12)."  (Main Supervisor: JP Warren).

Lachlan MacKinnon, 2016, PhD History, “Deindustrialization on the Periphery: An Oral History of Sydney Steel, 1945-2001."

Rosemary O’Flaherty, 2016, PhD History, “Damming the Remains: Traces of the Lost Seaway Communities.”

Ioana Radu, 2015, Humanities PhD, “Uschiniichuu Futures: Healing, Empowerment and Agency among the Chisasibi Cree Youth.”

Heather McNabb, 2015, PhD History, “Visions of North: Exploring the Stories Photographs Can Tell and their Role in Museum Practice, 1947-1987.” 

Alan Wong, 2013, Individualized Study PhD, “Between Rage and Love”: Disidentifications Among Racialized, Ethnicized, and Colonized Allosexual Activists in Montreal. »

Shauna Janssen, 2013, Humanities PhD, “Spaces of Indeterminancy: Artistic Engagement with former Industrial Sites.” 

Luba Serge, 2013, Individualized PhD, “Benny Farm: A Study of Collective Action, Local Democracy and Power.”

Catherine Foisy, 2012, Humanities PhD, “Des Québécois aux frontière : dialogues et affrontements culturels aux dimensions du monde. Récits missionnaires d’Asie, d’Afrique et d’Amérique latine (1945-1980).  

Lindsay Pattison, 2011, PhD History, “The Dynamics of the Disc’: Ultimate (Frisbee),Community and Memory,1968-2011”

Erin Jessee, 2011, Humanities PhD,“Inscribed Intent: Genocidal Symbolic Violence and Social Death in the Aftermath  of the Rwandan and Bosnian Genocides. 

Master’s Students:

Bryan Gordon, 2019, History MA, "Hoarders: An Oral History."

Lauren Laframboise, 2021, History MA, "The Suburbanized Spatial Restructuring of Montreal’s Garment Factories, 1959 to 1989."

Kelann Currie-Williams, INDI MA, 2021 "Prolonging the Afterimage: Looking at and Talking About Photographs of Black Montreal" [Secondary advisor]

Tanya Steinberg, 2019, History MA, “Place,Community and Memory in Postindustrial Pointe-Saint-Charles"

Sara Kendall, 2017,Individualized MA, “On the Revitalized City, At-Risk Youth, and Other Ways of Telling.”

Tyson Rosberg, 2016, History MA, “A Sheltered World: Remembering the Great Depression in Rural Quebec and the Prairies."

Eliot Perrin, 2016, History MA, “The Emergence of the Heritage Preservation Movement in Montreal.”

Pharo Sok, 2015, History MA, “Making Memories in Montreal: Cambodian Canadians and the Strategic Construction of Past and Present Selves, 1974-2015.”

Liam Michaud O’Grady, 2015, SIP MA (Co-Supervision), “La repression, ça finit par donner des résultats’: The Displacement and Erasure of Street Culture in Downtown Montréal, 1995-2010.”

Kyle Marsh, 2015, History MA, “The Consequence of Babel: 9/11 as Focal Point of Dispute in American Socio-Political Discourse.” 

Ashley Clarkson, 2015, History MA, “Oral History at Pier 21: Canada’s National Museum of Immigration.”

Aude Maltais-Landry, 2014, History MA, « Le concept de reserve indienne: étude de casde la communauté de Nutashkuan, »

Al Yoshizawa, 2014, History MA, “The Hunt for Matsutake.”

Simon Vickers, 2014, History MA, “From Balconville to Condoville – what about Co-opville? The Cooperative Housing Movement in Point St. Charles.”

Samah Affan, 2013, History MA, “Keywords in Conversation: Lessons from the Social Production of Space for Oral Histories of African Diasporas.”

Kim Moore, 2013, History MA, “Subjective Listening: Methodological and Interpretative Challenges and Opportunities in Constructing an Online Oral History Database.” 

Emily MacLeod, 2013, History MA. “Revisiting Old Town: Examining the Post-Occupational History of the Fortress of Louisbourg.”

Caroline Raimbault, 2012, Co-Director. "Une muséologie de l’immatériel: Réflexions sur la mise en valeur du témoignage oral à travers l’exemple de l’exposition Quartiers disparus au Centred’histoire de Montréal.” Université de Nantes.

Caitlin Alton, 2011, History MA, “Cultural Diversity in Mile End: Everyday Interactions between Hasidim and Non-Hasidim.”

Marie Pelletier, 2011, History MA “”Finding Meaning in Oral History Sources through Storytelling and Religion:  Case Study of Three Cambodian Refugees.”

Jessica Mills, 2010, History MA. “What’s the Point? The Meaning of Place, Memory, and Community in Point Saint Charles, Quebec.”

Maija Lise Fenger, 2009, History MA. “Banff Indian Days and the Stoney First Nation: An Exploration of the Frontier Myth.”

Jessica Silva, 2009, History MA, “Interpreting Genocide: The Graphic Novel of Rwandan-Montrealer Rupert Bazambanza.” 2009.

Christopher Clarke, 2008, History MA. “The Rucksack Revolution: The Beat Generation’s Views of Nature.”

Anna Wilkinson, 2008, History MA, “Oral History and Museums: A Case Study.”

William Hamilton, 2008, History MA, “The Miner’s Memorial of Kirkland Lake, Ontario.”

Undergraduate Teaching

I teach a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. At the 200-level, I teach Post-Confederation Canada. At the 300-level, I teach several courses in the public history stream including Telling Stories and the Urban History Laboratory. At the 400/graduate level, I teach deindustrialization studies as well as oral history.