Modern Canadian and European History, War and Technology, Immigration and Academic Refugees
Office Hours
Spring 2024: Zoom by appointment
Bio
I am the Professor of Military History at the University of Victoria. I was educated at the University of Toronto and the University of New Brunswick, and have been a member of the faculty of the University of Victoria since 1988. I am an expert in the history of the Royal Canadian Navy, anti-submarine warfare, science, technology and war, and the rescue of refugee academics from Germany in the1930s.
Selected publications
Books:
Ensnared Between Hitler and Stalin: Refugee Scientists in the USSR
The Great Naval Battle of Ottawa
Top Secret Exchange: The Tizard Mission and the Scientific War
Maritime Command Pacific: The Royal Canadian Navy's West Coast Fleet in the Early Cold War
Britain`s Shield: Radar and the Defeat of the Luftwaffe
Articles and chapters:
"Information and the Air Defence Revolution, 1917-1940," Journal of Strategic Studies, August, 2004.
"The Society for the Protection of Science and Learning and the Politicization of British Science in the 1930s," Minerva, Vol 43 No. 4, (December 2005)
"'A Narrow Minded People': Canadian Academics and the Academic Refugee Crisis, 1933-40", I , Vol 88 No 2 ((June 2007), 291-316.
"'Protests Butter no Parsnips': Lord Beveridge and the Rescue of Refugee Academics from Europe, 1933-1938", I, editors Professor Shula Marks, Professor Paul Weindling and Laura Wintour, The British Academy, 2011.
"Technology and War" The Encyclopedia of War, Wiley Publishers, 2011.
Courses
HSTR 115
The Second World War
HSTR 131
History of Technology
HSTR 344A
The First World War
HSTR 383A
War and Society Prior to 1700
HSTR 383B
War and Society, 1700 - 1914
HSTR 383C
War and Society, 1945 - present
HSTR 426
Seminar in Canadian Military History
HSTR 482
Seminar in Peace and War Studies
HSTR 482A
Issues in the History of the Second World War
Grad students
Recent PhDs:
Hugh Gordon, "Cheers and tears relations between Canadian soldiers and German civilians, 1944-46"
Denis Dubord, "Unseen enemies an examination of infectious diseases and their influence upon the Canadian Army in two major campaigns during the First and Second World Wars"
Tim Balzer, "The information front : the Canadian Army and news management during the second World War'
