UCD School of English Drama Film Scoil an Bhéarla, na Drámaíochta agus na Scannánaíochta UCD

Craig Dobbin Chair in Canadian Studies

The Craig Dobbin Chair was established in the 1990s, a legacy of Dr. Craig Dobbin of St John's, Newfoundland, whose forebears came from Co. Waterford, Ireland. The Craig Dobbin Professorship of Canadian Studies was endowed and established at UCD in 1994,  through Professor John Kelly, when he was Registrar of the College, in conjunction with the Ireland Canada University Foundation. Since then, the Professorship has been held by several Canadian scholars, as follows:

 

Craig Dobbin Professors

 

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Photo Credit: Mark Raynes Roberts

2017-18 Craig Dobbin Professor Jane Urquhart

Jane Urquhart is the author of eight internationally acclaimed novels, among them The Whirlpool (winner, Le prix du meilleur livre étranger, France); Away (winner, Trillium Award, Canada); The Underpainter, (winner, Governor General’s Award, Canada; finalist, The Orange Prize, UK); and The Stone Carvers, (finalist, The Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award, Canada; finalist, Booker Prize, UK). She is the author of a collection of short fiction, and four books of poetry, and she has also written a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery, and was editor of the Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories. Her work, which is published in many countries, has been translated into numerous foreign languages. Urquhart has received the Marian Engel Award and the Harbourfront Festival Prize. She is a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and is an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2016 she published A Number of Things; Stories of Canada told through 50 Objects, which was commissioned by publisher HarperCollins to celebrate Canada’s sesquicentennial.

English Students can take two Modules with this Booker-Prize Nominated author!

ENG10190: Introduction to Canadian Studies

ENG31740: Canadian Literature: Narratives of Migration 

 

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‌2016-17: Professor Linda Morra, Bishop’s University (Canadian Literature)
Linda Morra is this year’s Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies at UCD. Her book, Unarrested Archives: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Women’s Authorship (UTP 2014), was a finalist for the Gabrielle Roy Prize. She edited Jane Rule’s autobiography, Taking My Life (Talon 2011, shortlisted for the LAMBDA Award) and co-edited Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace: Explorations in Canadian Women’s Archives (WLUP 2012). Her research interests encompass Canadian women’s autobiography and biography, theories of the archive, gender, and national identity.
 
 
2015-16: Professor Jane Koustas, Brock University (French-Canadian Literature)
Jane Koustas, who has served as the Craig Dobbin Chair several times, is a Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Brock University, where she also directed Canadian Studies. Her most recent book is entitled Robert Lepage on the Toronto Stage: Language, Identity, Nation (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016). She also published Landscapes and Landmarks of Canada: Real, Imagined, (Re)viewed with Maeve Conrick et. al, based on research presented at an Association for Canadian Studies in Ireland conference (WLUP, 2016).
 
 
2014-15: Professor Brian Foss, Carleton University (Art History)
Brian Foss is Director of the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University, and held the Craig Dobbin Chair at UCD in 2014-15. He publishes and curates extensively in historical Canadian art. Most recently he co-organized (with Jacques Des Rochers) the award-winning exhibition 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2015).
 
 
2013-14: Professor Robin Elliot, University of Toronto (Music)
Robin Elliott studied music at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada and at the University of Toronto (PhD, 1990). He was appointed to the Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music at the University of Toronto in 2002. Prior to that he was a faculty member in music at University College Dublin from 1996 to 2002. He returned to UCD as the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies in 2013. The main focus of his scholarly work is composed Canadian music; he has produced a dozen books and editions of music (as author or editor), and 100 articles of varying length in that field.
 
 
2010-2011 Professor Jane Koustas, Brock University (French-Canadian Literature)
(See above)
 
 
2009-10 Professor Raymond Blake, University of Regina (Canadian History)
Raymond B. Blake is professor and head of the Department of History at the University of Regina. Previously, he was Director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University and Director of the Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy. He has taught at a number of universities throughout Canada, and was Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Philipps-Universitat Marburg in Germany. His primary field of study is Canadian political history, but he has published broadly within that research field on such topics as Confederation, federalism, citizenship and national identity, and social policy. He has published and edited 16books, numerous book chapters, and articles in Canada’s leading academic journals, including the Canadian Historical Review and Acadiensis. His current project is a study of how Canada’s prime ministers have articulated a national identity for the country which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canda. 
 
 
2005-06 Professor Jane Koustas, Brock University (French-Canadian Literature)
(See above)
 
 
2003-05 Professor Linda Cardinal, University of Ottawa (Political Science)
Linda Cardinal, professor at the School of Political Studies, is the Chaire de recherche sur la francophonie et les politiques publiques of the University of Ottawa. She is also known for her work on the themes of identity and citizenship in Canada and Québec politics as well as federalism, institutions, political représentations and the history of ideas. As an international expert who contributes to the research on Canada's francophone minorities in Canadian politics, she has also published numerous articles and directed several works related to these themes. From 2001 to 2004, she directed the journal of political science “Politique et societies.” In 2013, she was elected at the Royal Society of Canada. In 2014, she was nominated Chevalière in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques of the French Republic.
 
 
1999-2000 Professor Wayne Davies, University of Calgary (Canadian Geography)
Wayne Kenneth David Davies completed his Bachelor of Science and his Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D) at the University of Wales. Following appointments at the University of Southampton and University College of Swansea, Davies joined the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary in 1974. His publications include The Conceptual Revolution in Geography, Urban Social Structure: A Multivariate Structural Analysis of Cardiff and its Region and Writing Geographical Exploration: James and the Northwest Passage, 1631-33.
 
 
1998-99 Professor John Moss, University of Ottawa (Canadian Literature)
Professor John Moss, Professor Emeritus from the University of Ottawa, became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2005. He is author of several books, including Being Fiction (2001), The Paradox of Meaning: Cultural Poetics and Critical Fictions (1999), and Invisible Among the Ruins: Field Notes of a Canadian in Ireland (2000). He editedMargaret Atwood: The Open Eye (2006) and, with another Craig Dobbin Chair, Dr. Linda Morra, co-edited At the Speed of Light There is Only Illumination (2004).
 
 
‌1995-97 Professor Dennis Duffy of Innes College, University of Toronto (Canadian Literature)
During his inaugural period as Craig Dobbin Chair (1995-97), Dennis Duffy assumed tutorial and lectorial responsibilities in various UCD courses involving Canadian and American texts and plays on both the Belfield and Black rock campuses, and at Maynooth also. Extensive and frequent meetings with scholars and administrators, departmental and University shaped his daily routines, as he sought to make the presence of Canadian studies felt both at UCD and elsewhere (Maynooth, TCD, QUB, Edinburgh), as well as on RTE. Playing an active role in the annual conferences of the Irish Association of Canadian Studies, he also organized a conference on Irish and Canadian topics (peacekeeping), held at the Embassy of Canada. The conference - as well as a number of formal and informal gatherings - embodied the extensive ties forged between the Embassy and the CD Chair's presence, both on and off-campus. The first year of the Chair witnessed a Canadian studies week on the Belfield campus, featuring both local and prominent Canadian diplomatic and political Canadian figures.