Trent University’s Dr. Joan Sangster will be spending the next academic year teaching at two of the most prestigious universities in the United States after receiving a visiting professorship and a fellowship from both Princeton and Duke Universities.

“I was really pleased when I learned the news and believe it’s healthy for us to teach at other institutions, sharing our research with colleagues in the United States, and also hearing their perspectives,” said Professor Sangster, who teaches in the History and Women’s Studies departments at Trent. “These professorships will also provide me with an opportunity to further internationalize Trent by expanding our relationships with these two highly respected institutions.”

In the fall, Prof. Sangster will be heading to Princeton where she will teach a course on Women in North America for the department of History and the Canadian Studies program. At Princeton, she will be the 2008-09 Pathy Visiting Professor. Pathy Professors are distinguished tenured Canadian faculty who come to Princeton while on a leave from their home institution to teach one undergraduate course that incorporates and promotes the study of some aspect of Canadian society, culture, politics, economics, or history.

Prof. Sangster has also been awarded a coveted Canada-U.S. Fulbright Chair in the spring of 2009 at Duke University, located in Durham, North Carolina. The Canada-U.S. Fulbright Program was established to identify the best scholars in each country and to engage them in educational exchanges to build overall intellectual capacity that enhances understanding between Canada and the United States.

Prof. Sangster received these two invitations based on her leading scholarship in the fields of women’s history, working-class history, and legal history. In addition to teaching at Princeton and Duke, she will be giving talks about her current book project, Transforming Labour, a study of the changes in women’s working lives in the post-World War II period. “Labour history tends to focus on unionized work, but I hope to also spotlight women in marginalized jobs and their unpaid work, for example, looking at Aboriginal women’s labour and service workers,” explained Prof. Sangster.

Prof. Sangster is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a recent recipient of a prestigious Canada Council Killam Fellowship. The author of four books, and co-editor of five collections, she has published widely in the areas of women’s history, working-class history, law and criminology, and Aboriginal history. She was recently awarded an Honourable Mention by the Canadian Historical Association for the best article in women’s history.

For more information about Prof. Sangster and the Women’s Studies department, please visit Joan Sangster's profile.