Trent University Announces 2008/2009 Ashley Fellow

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Curator of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum and Trent Alumna
Dr. Laura Peers to Serve as Ashley Fellow during Lady Eaton College’s 40th Anniversary Year

Monday, July 7, 2008, Peterborough

As part of planned celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the opening of Trent University’s Lady Eaton College (LEC), the University has named LEC alumna and renowned curator of Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum, Dr. Laura Peers, as the prestigious Ashley Fellow for the 2008/2009 academic year.

“We are thrilled to have Dr. Peer’s return to Trent as the next Ashley Fellow, especially in the year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Lady Eaton College,” said Prof. Arndt Krüger, principal of LEC. “She is a real Trent interdisciplinary success story; her research interests and teaching cut across a wide field of programs and departments and she will be able to offer members of the Trent and Peterborough communities interesting insight into a wide range of fascinating topics.”

Dr. Peers graduated from Trent in 1985 with a degree in Anthropology and Native Studies. She completed a Master’s degree in History through the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba before pursuing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at McMaster University.
In 1998 Dr. Peers was appointed curator of the “Americas Collections” of the famous Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK where she was also appointed as a Teaching Fellow of Linacre College of the University of Oxford and taught at the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level.

In her research, Dr. Peers in particularly interested in the relations between museums and indigenous peoples, material culture as mediating cross-cultural relations in the historic Red River Settlement, ca 1780 to 1880, and cultural tourism, specifically the self-representation by Aboriginal peoples of Aboriginal histories and cultures at public history sites.
As Trent’s 2008 Ashley Fellow, Dr. Peers will be living in residence at Lady Eaton College from early January 2009 until February 5. During this time she will be making herself available to individual students as well as lecturing and holding seminars in courses of Indigenous Studies, Canadian Studies, History, Museum Studies and Anthropology. Undergraduate, M.A. and Ph.D. students, as well as members of the Peterborough community, will benefit greatly from her broad and in depth knowledge of First Nations people and their culture. Public lectures will be announced at a later time.

About the Ashley Fellowship

The Ashley Fellowship is funded by a bequest from the late Professor C.A. Ashley, long-time friend of Trent University and an enthusiastic proponent of the role that informal contacts of college life can play in the academic pursuits of the University. The Ashley Fellows, therefore, are visiting scholars who reside at one of Trent's residential Colleges for part of the year, delivering lectures and meeting with faculty and students.

In the past, fellowships have been awarded to Cynthia Good, a highly respected Canadian book publisher and editor, Dr. Timothy McGee, a recently retired University of Toronto professor, Dr. Randy Stoecker, a University of Toledo professor who focuses on community-based education, Tama Turanga Huata from Aotearoa, New Zealand, Dr. David Montgomery, a well-known historian of the American labour movement, and Dr. Peter Stephenson, an internationally-recognized senior medical anthropologist.

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For more information, please contact:
Prof. Arndt Krüger, Principal, Lady Eaton College, Trent University, (705) 748-1011 x7625