Research team

The Canadian History Research Centre is also part of the Research Division, and her team is responsible for access to the Museum’s library and collections.

Bianca Gendreau’s research interests focus on contemporary issues, including the functions of research, responsibilities towards collections, and the digital future in the context of museums.

She has an MA in History and an MA in Museology from the Université de Montréal.

Sanchini’s research interests include oral history methodologies, intangible cultural heritage, and vernacular aesthetics in contemporary craft traditions. She currently leads the Museum’s major oral history initiative, Shaping Canada, which seeks to document the experiences of influential people in Canada. She is past-President of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada and a member of the Board of Directors for the Italian-Canadian Archives Project.

In addition, Sanchini sits on the editorial boards of Ornamentum magazine and the Mercury Series, and has been published in Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture, Ethnologies, and Material Culture Review. Prior to joining the Museum, she worked as an oral historian at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, and as a lecturer and archives assistant at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Sanchini has a BA (First Class Honours) in History and World Religions from McGill University, as well as an MA and a PhD in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Between 2008 and 2020, he collaborated with Acadia First Nation to explore Mi’kmaw culture history, resulting in the monograph Place-Making in the Pretty Harbour (2019). In 2021, with M. Gabriel Hrynick, he also published the first comprehensive evaluation of the region’s archaeological history in The Archaeology of the Atlantic Northeast.

Betts was one of the lead curators for the Canadian History Hall. He has twice won the Canadian Archaeological Association’s Public Communications Award, and is the first Chair of their Climate Change Committee, which developed the CAA Statement on Climate Change and Archaeology in 2022. He is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and an adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Brunswick. Betts holds an MSc and a PhD from the University of Toronto.

Desrosiers views community archaeology as a way of understanding the past, while highlighting traditional knowledge and providing informal education. His work promotes the inclusion of local communities at all stages of a multidisciplinary research project, incorporating the earth sciences, an analysis of technologies, and the history of these types of investigations.

Desrosiers was trained in Anthropology at the Université de Montréal, and has an M.A. from the Université de Nanterre and a Ph.D. from the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris. He has edited three books, including The Emergence of Pressure Blade Making (2012) and Ramah Chert: A Lithic Odyssey (2017). The latter was produced in relation to the official recognition of kitjigattalik — Ramah Chert Quarries as a National Historic Site.

Ryan curated the award-winning exhibition Death in the Ice: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition, which was presented in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States between 2017 and 2019. She is also the curator of The Ones We Met – Inuit Traditional Knowledge and the Franklin Expedition, which is currently travelling across Canada.

A Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Ryan has a PhD from the University of Toronto.

Yanicki’s research explores how kinship, social distance, and identity are reflected in archaeological materials and styles, and how indicators of the movement of ideas, individuals, and groups can reveal intercultural contact and sociodemographic change.

Yanicki has an MA and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Alberta. His work has covered such topics as the archaeology of traditional games, Dene migration and the emergence of proto-Apachean social identities, and the first peopling of the Ice-Free Corridor. He is the author of Old Man’s Playing Ground: Gaming and Trade on the Plains/Plateau Frontier (2014), a Mercury Series volume published by the Canadian Museum of History and the University of Ottawa Press.

Young’s research interests include biomechanical and pathological changes in the human skeleton, as they relate to the activity patterns and general health of past and present populations. Her publications and presentations have covered a wide range of topics, including repatriation, forensics and historical bioarchaeology. Her current work deals with a historical cemetery population from the Ottawa area.

Young has an Honours BA in Archaeology and Ancient History from the University of Ottawa; an MSc in Human Osteology, Palaeopathology and Funerary Archaeology from the University of Bradford, England; and a PhD in Population Health from the University of Ottawa.

In addition, she has completed Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Sports, Society, and Technology program in the School of History and Sociology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University.

Barnes has extensive experience in research, teaching and publications, along with expertise in the history of athlete welfare and social issues in sport. She is a former varsity basketball player and coach, who worked for five summers as a team manager with the Canadian Women’s National Basketball Program.

Her work engages with Indigenous sovereignties as plural, dynamic, and relational forces that emerge through land, story, and kinship. She explores how these forces shape ethical approaches to tangible and intangible collections in the North and beyond. She draws on oral traditions, lived experience, and more-than-human relationships to support responsive and transformative practices of care, representation, and rematriation.

Sonya is committed to fostering collaborative relationships between communities and museums, grounded in respect, responsibility and restoration.

Kemp’s curatorial responsibilities include the Eastern Woodlands, Northeastern Atlantic, and the Eastern Sub-Arctic Ethnology collections. Research interests include Indigenous food security and the reclamation of sovereignty, including the integration of traditional knowledge, the repatriation of culturally significant materials, and the importance of ongoing informed consent in Indigenous research.

Kemp has a BA in Political Science, Philosophy, and Atlantic Canadian Studies, as well as an MA in Atlantic Canadian Studies, from Saint Mary’s University. Her studies include Mi’kmaw resistance to policies and legislation with a negative impact on Indigenous rights in Atlantic Canada.

Kristine’s research projects focus on Indigiqueer/Two-Spirit art and artists. They are currently leading the development and acquisition of an Indigenous LGBTQ2S+ art collection at the museum.

Their current research focuses on Indigiqueer/Two-Spirit arts as critical interventions in the dominant heteropatriarchal colonial narrative. Kristine has a special interest in kink as method, Indigiqueer expressions of gender and sex, and body sovereignty.

Prior to joining the museum, Kristine worked in the education department at the National Gallery of Canada. They have also previously co-curated three Indigenous arts exhibitions, Nigi Mikan: I found It (Falldown Gallery, 2013), Echoing the Land (Indigenous Art Centre, 2019) and Echoing the Land 2.0 (Byward Market, 2022-23). Kristine holds BA (Honours) in English and an MA in Canadian Studies, both from Carleton University.

In 2019, McCormick joined the Museum as Curator, with responsibilities that include stewarding collections from the Western Subarctic, Northwest Coast, and Plateau. As a curator, she continues to support the Museum’s repatriation priorities, and is currently developing a major research and exhibition project involving a critical revisitation of the 1927 “Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art: Native and Modern,” which will be undertaken in collaboration with colleagues and experts on the Northwest Coast.

McCormick holds an MA in Art History from Carleton University and a PhD in Canadian Studies from the University of Edinburgh. She also completed postdoctoral training at Brown University and Yale University.

She is keen on providing greater access to collections, and welcomes requests for access from community members, artists and experts across Western Canada.

Ouellet-Riendeau has published articles for the general public on the regional history of Quebec’s Eastern Townships, particularly in relation to legal history, commercial history, and sports history. Between 2016 and 2018, she took workshops with the Canadian Conservation Institute on the reorganization of collections storage, later becoming a trainer for RE-ORG Canada.

Ouellet-Riendeau has both a BA and an MA in History from the Université de Sherbrooke, as well as a diploma in Archival Practices from Université Laval. She is primarily interested in the agency of individual people and groups, and the roles they have played in the urbanization and industrialization of Quebec. Her MA research involved an exploration of the role of the Simard family in the development of the town of Sorel, Quebec, in the early 20th century.

Rooted in relationality and community-based research, her fieldwork focuses on a distinct Indigenous women’s cottage industry that emerged on the Northern Great Plains in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Pollock has an MA and a PhD in History from the University of Alberta. She was also a contributor to Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America, which won the 2021 Bard Graduate Center’s Horowitz Book Prize. In addition, Pollock teaches Indigenous Studies and best practices with the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Native Studies, and with University of Ottawa’s Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies.

In 2014, Côté published Construire la nation au petit écran: Le Canada, une histoire populaire [Building a Nation on the Small Screen – Canada: A People’s History]. As a media historian, he is interested in Canadian television as a conveyor of modernism and identity — particularly children’s television programming and its integration of historically marginalized communities.

Côté has a BA in History from Université Laval, an MA from York University, and a PhD from Université Laval. He is also a founding member of the website HistoireEngagee.ca /ActiveHistory.ca.

Foran curated large portions of the Canadian History Hall, launched in 2017. His current projects focus on Indigenous Peoples on British colonial frontiers, the lumber industry in central Canada, and Canadian experiences and perceptions of the American Civil War (1861–1865).

Foran has a BA and an MA from the University of Calgary, as well as a PhD from the University of Ottawa.   

From 2003 to 2011, Gélinas was curator of the long-term exhibition Face to Face: The Canadian Personalities Hall (2007), followed by A Queen and Her Country (2012–2013). He was also part of the team for the Canadian History Hall, which opened in 2017, and is co-curator of the exhibition Lost Liberties – The War Measures Act (2021–2022).

Gélinas’s research and publications explore the political, intellectual and constitutional history of Canada and Quebec during the 20th century. In 2007, Les Presses de l’Université Laval published La droite intellectuelle québécoise et la Révolution tranquille [Intellectual Property in Quebec and the Quiet Revolution], an adaptation of his doctoral thesis. With Lucia Ferretti, he edited Duplessis, son milieu, son époque [Duplessis, His Time and His World] (2010) and, with Éric Bédard, edited two volumes in the Chroniques politiques de René Lévesque [The Political Writings of René Lévesque] (2014 and 2017). His current research focuses on the history of Canadian-American relations.

Gélinas has a BA and an MA in History from the Université de Montréal, and a PhD from York University.

Klassen is also actively involved in the Cultures of Sound Network, a collaborative network that seeks to increase access to archival sound collections, while also exploring sound-related themes and learning opportunities that connect institutions and communities. She has been published in numerous popular and academic books and journals and, with Anna Hoefnagels and Sherry Johnson, is co-editor of Contemporary Musical Expressions in Canada (2019).

Klassen is a former board member of the Hnatyshyn Foundation, past-President of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music, and has worked as a violist and string instructor in Canada, Mexico and Paraguay.

Lozier’s book, Flesh Reborn: The Saint Lawrence Valley Mission Settlements Through the Seventeenth Century (2018) won the French Colonial Historical Society’s Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Book Prize. He has also been the curator of two major exhibitions at the Canadian Museum of History, 1867: Rebellion and Confederation (2015) and Napoleon and Paris (2016).

Lozier has a PhD from the University of Toronto and has taught at the University of Ottawa.   

Daniel’s research interests include craft, technology, and apprenticeship-based research methodologies. With Dr. Laura Sanchini, he co-leads the Museum’s major oral history initiative, Shaping Canada, which seeks to document the experiences of influential Canadians. He is also working with Dr. Sanchini on an exhibition that will showcase the Museum’s craft collection in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Saidye Bronfman Award for Fine Craft.

Daniel strives to grow the Museum’s relationship with Canada’s diverse craft communities and to make the Museum’s vast craft collection a resource to Canada’s next generation of makers and craft researchers

He holds an MA from York University and is in the final stages of his SSHRC-funded PhD at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His research is focused on musical instrument makers and the intersection of craft, technology, and masculinity.

Saeedeh Niktab Etaati (سعیده نیک طبع اطاعتی) is Curator, Diasporas and Multinational Communities. She is responsible for the intellectual management and development of collections that document the histories and contemporary experiences of diasporic communities across Canada.

Saeedeh’s curatorial practice is rooted in community-engaged ethnographic research and oral history methodologies. She uses these as her primary tools for understanding, preserving and representing how diasporic communities in Canada experience and respond to historical, global and sociopolitical events. Her research interests include transnational movements, anticolonial feminism, and the vernacular and expressive cultures of the diaspora, particularly from the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. Saeedeh is committed to working with communities that are under-represented and marginalized within the larger Canadian historical narrative. She has published her work in academic journals such as Ethnologies, Digest, and Peace Review.

Before joining the Canadian Museum of History, Saeedeh worked at Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum and taught as a partial-load academic professor in the Liberal Studies Department at Humber College. She is a former board member and director of the Iranian Women’s Organization of Ontario. Currently, she serves as the chair of the board for the Golha Initiative for Music and Culture, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and presenting non-Western orchestral music in Canada. Saeedeh holds an MA in in Folklore from Memorial University, Canada and an MA in Art Studies from the University of Tehran, Iran.

Her current research interests involve the use of photography and audiovisual material in exhibition spaces, cultural representation and the role of media and media studies in a museum space, and collections development.

Stober was appointed Chairperson of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board in 2023. Prior to joining the Canadian Museum of History, she was the Historian of War and Visual Culture at the Canadian War Museum. She holds a PhD in Communication Studies and an MA in Media Studies from Concordia University, and a BA in Canadian Studies from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. Stober is an Adjunct Professor in the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University, and has taught with the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa.

Trepanier is a specialist in the history of children and youth, bringing that expertise to his many Museum projects. He has worked extensively on the history of the Scouting movement in Canada, with a particular focus on French-English relations in the movement and Scouting in Indian residential schools across the country. He has been published in the Journal of Canadian Studies, Historical Studies in Education, and Quebec Studies, and has contributed to many works on childhood studies and public history and commemoration in Canada.

Originally from British Columbia, Trepanier has a PhD in History from York University, where he was a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar, as well as a BA and an MA in History from the University of Ottawa.