Pia Russell
Position
Contact
Credentials
BA (UBC), MISt (UofT), MEd (OISE/UofT), MA (UVic)
Area of expertise
Comprehensive areas: History of British Columbia and particularly the south coast (focus on period up to 1920), history of Canada (focus on period up to 1900), history of children and childhood, comparative history of gender and sexuality in early modern transatlantic world, and ethnohistory. Additional areas of focus: History of settler colonialism and European imperialism in North America (focus on period up to 1900), Indigenous-settler relations, history of education, history of the book and textual culture, public history, digital humanities, and curation and cultural heritage in the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums). I teach and co-teach credit courses on topics related to race, racism, and ethnicity in Canada up to 1900, as well as regularly provide in depth library research seminars embedded within courses on topics related to research methods, bibliography, education, Indigenous studies, and gender studies.
Bio
Currently I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Victoria where my dissertation focuses on settler colonialism and BC’s historical public school textbooks (1871-1921). My supervisors are Professors Lynne Marks, Christine O’Bonsawin, and John Lutz. Professionally, cultural heritage is my vocational passion and I have worked in the field of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (“the GLAM sector”) for over twenty years. I am trained as a historian, archivist, librarian, curator, and educator. Currently, I work as UVic's librarian for Education, where I am a member of the Special Collections and University Archives team. Born and raised in xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory, I am grateful to now live and work in the unceded homelands of lək̓ʷəŋən and SENĆOŦEN-speaking communities. My ancestry is Danish, Scottish, and English and I use she/her pronouns.
To further develop UVic’s British Columbia Historical Textbooks (BCHT) collection, from 2021 to 2024 I was the Primary Investigator of a Social Science and Humanities Research Council’s (SSHRC) Insight funded grant titled Unsettling History: An Interactive Digital Library of British Columbia’s Historical Textbooks, 1871-1921. Our research team won the 2022 British Columbia Library Association (BCLA) Champion of Intellectual Freedom Award. To learn more about the BCHT research project,
- Listen to episode seven of Taapwaywin, a UVic podcast on truth, memory, and human rights. BCHT is featured in the episode Textbook Colonization: Land, Education, Stories.Ry Moran interviews my co-researcher, Chaa’winisaks, and I as we share insights on the BCHT collection (our segment runs from minutes 05:24 to 22:12).
- Read a blog post and lesson plan completed during my time as a Liberating the Collections Fellow at University College London.
- Watch a short four-minute video introduction to the BCHT collection.
Learn more about my research, publications, and professional work on my ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3887-1728 or on my subject specialist librarian webpage. Office hours by appointment via email or through the UVic Libraries’ ‘Book a Librarian’ calendar.