“History in the Hot Seat: Colonialism and the Knowing and Teaching of Canada’s Past” is a project led by Dr. Adele Perry, Director of the Centre for Human Rights Research and Professor of History and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Manitoba. It is funded by the 2024 Knowledge Synthesis Grant Competition from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (in partnership with Canadian Heritage, Genome Canada, and UK Research Innovation’s Arts and Humanities Research Council). Following the competition’s theme, “Evolving Narratives of Cultures and Histories,” History in the Hot Seat will synthesize a decade of reckoning with Canada’s past and what it means to learn and teach it, considering ongoing histories of colonialism and Indigenous dispossession.

History in the Hot Seat will provide valuable and portable knowledge about the current reckoning with Canada’s past and what it means for how we might rethink Canada’s history and how we research, commemorate, and study it. These findings will be relevant for academics, public history professionals and organizations, educators and others working to develop and sustain visions of Canada’s past that recognize the role of colonization, dispossession, and systemic racism in Canada’s past, present, and future. Learn more about History in the Hot Seat here!