Current projects
Coal in Alberta
An environmental history
This project examines the post-Second World War expansion of coal mining in Alberta in the context of a broader fossil fuel economy. It focuses in particular on environmental regulation and impacts of strip mining for coal.
This is a collaborative project with Heather Green, a doctoral student in History at the University of Alberta.
We have two recent publications arising from this project see:
- Piper, L. and H. Green, "A Province Powered by Coal: The Renaissance of Coal Mining in Late Twentieth Century Alberta," Canadian Historical Review 98, no. 3 (Sept. 2017): 532-567.
- Piper, L. "Coal in the Age of the Oil Sands." Environmental Knowledge, Environmental Politics: Case Studies from Canada and Western Europe. Rachel Carson Center Perspectives, 4 (2016): 69-75.
Health and ecological change
in the 20th century North
This project includes articles and a book manuscript in preparation that examine the role of disease, and epidemics in particular, as part of changing environments and changing knowledge across northern Canada, with particular attention to the Mackenzie and Yukon river watersheds between 1900 and 1970.
Publications from this project include:
- Piper, L. "Chesterfield Inlet, 1949 and the Ecology of Epidemic Polio,” Environmental History 20, no.4 (October 2015): 671-698. doi:10.1093/envhis/emv101. This article is freely available online as part of the journal's 40th anniversary virtual edition.
- Piper, L. “From Subsistence to Nutrition: The Canadian State’s involvement in food and diet in the North, 1900-1970.” In Ice Blink: Canada’s Northern Environmental History, ed. Stephen Bocking and Brad Martin. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2016.
Environmental activism on the ground
The ways in which we come to know the environment are always inherently political—as are the ways in which environmental knowledge is put to use in the world. Focusing on “scientific knowledge” and “Indigenous knowledge,” on knowledge obtained through work as well as through leisure, the contributions in this volume explore how environmental knowledge is acquired, constructed, and deployed to make political claims on or for the environment.
See our recent blog post on "Environmental Knowledge and Environmental Politics in the “Post-Truth” Era."
To see the full issue go here:
- Clapperton, J. and L. Piper. Eds. Environmental Knowledge, Environmental Politics: Case Studies from Canada and Western Europe. Rachel Carson Center Perspectives, 4 (2016).
Northern exposures
Science, Indigenous peoples and northern contaminants.
I'm part of a SSHRC-funded project, working with Arn Keeling (MUN), John Sandlos (MUN), Lianne Leddy (Laurier), Stephen Bocking (Trent), and Matt Farish (UofT) on the environmental history and cultural politics of pollution and toxicity in Canada's northern regions.
As part of this collaboration, my research is focused on the environmental and cultural history of northern food hazards.This research has two parts: 1) To examine indigenous understandings of and efforts to mitigate food hazards in the first half of the twentieth century 2) To understand the construction of scientific knowledge in universities and government research institutes, in relation to community understandings of food hazards, by focusing on feeding infants and breastfeeding.
