Degrees: Ph.D. New Brunswick, M.A. Victoria, B.A. Victoria

Email: isitt@uvic.ca | Office: Clearihue B349

More: Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Post-confederation Canadian history; working-class history and comparative labour relations; social movements; British Columbia and the Canadian West; comparative social democracy; Canadian political history.

HIST 132 History of Canada Since 1867
HIST 358 British Columbia Since 1945
HIST 469 Social Movements in World History
HIST 3332: The Canadian Worker Since 1914 (UNB)

Dr. Benjamin Isitt is assistant professor and postdoctoral fellow of history at the University of Victoria. He specializes in Canadian and world history, with particularly emphasis on social movements in the twentieth century. Dr. Isitt holds a PhD from the University of New Brunswick and has published in leading journals including the Canadian Historical Review and Canadian Journal of Political Science, with two monographs forthcoming in 2010. Dr. Isitt has travelled extensively, to 49 countries on five continents, facilitating ongoing exchanges with international scholars. He has employment and volunteer experience in journalism, government, and the non-profit sector.

Dr. Isitt's research agenda reflects these broad experiences. His monograph From Victoria to Vladivostok builds from an award-winning journal article that employed the method of micro-history to illuminate turbulent social relations during the First World War. This led to further transnational research on Canada's forgotten Siberian Expedition of 1918-1919, providing a rare dialogue between social history, military history, and the history of international relations. Engaging digital scholarship, the Siberian Expedition Digital Archive brings this history to life for students, teachers, and the public. Dr. Isitt's second monograph, Militant Minority, combines oral history and "horizontal history," examining diverse responses within British Columbia's postwar working class to changing economic and social conditions. Dr. Isitt is now completing a postdoctoral study of the interaction between workers and environmentalists, examining how competing claims to diminishing natural resources impacted British Columbia's social democratic political tradition.

From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada's Siberian Expedition, 1917-1919 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, April 2010) (in-production)

Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, October 2010) (in-production)

Globalization on the Resource Frontier: Workers, Environmentalists and the British Columbia New Democratic Party, 1972-2001 (in-progress)

"Searching for Workers' Solidarity: The One Big Union and Victoria General Strike of 1919." Labour/Le Travail, 60 (Fall 2007): 11-44.

"Social Democracy in Twentieth Century Canada: An Interpretive Framework." Canadian Journal of Political Science, 40:3 (September 2007): 567-589. With Nelson Wiseman.

"The Hospital Employees' Union Strike and the Privatization of Medicare in British Columbia, Canada." International Labor and Working-Class History, 71 (Spring 2007): 91-111. With Melissa Moroz.

"Mutiny from Victoria to Vladivostok, December 1918." Canadian Historical Review, 87:2 (June 2008): 223-264.

Housing For All: The Social Economy and Homelessness in British Columbia's Capital Region (Victoria: British Columbia Institute for Co-operative Studies, 2008)

Tug-of-War: The Working Class and Political Change in British Columbia, 1948-1972 (PhD thesis, University of New Brunswick, 2008)

Higher Learning and the Labour Market in a Changing World: An Environmental Scan for British Columbia (Victoria: Ministry of Advanced Education, 2008)

Langford's Bear Mountain Interchange: Urbanization on the Western Frontier and the Blurring of Public and Private Interests (Victoria: Research commissioned by West Coast Environmental Law, 2007)

SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2008-2010

SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Fellowship, 2004-2007

Best Graduate Research Award, Labor and Working-Class History Association, 2006

PhD Graduate Arts Assistantship, University of New Brunswick, 2003-2004

Canadian Social History Archive: www.socialhistory.ca
A digital archive providing access to documents and oral interviews on Canada's social history.

Canada's Siberian Expedition: www.SiberianExpedition.ca
Explores the forgotten history of Canada's Siberian Expedition, which saw 4,192 soldiers deployed from Victoria to Vladivostok in the wake of the Russian Revolution.