Welcome! I am Associate Professor in the Department of History and the graduate program in Environmental Sciences/Studies at Nipissing University.

I am an executive member of NiCHE (Network in Canadian History of the Environment) and a member of the editorial board of NiCHE’s blog The Otter and an Associate of the Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University. I am also, with R.W. Sandwell and Colin Duncan, academic editor of the McGill-Queen’s Rural, Wildland and Resource Studies Series.

Research

---

My research is in the agricultural and environmental history of Canada, particularly the history of subsistence production and its relationship to capitalist and global markets for food. I am also interested in understanding Canadian environmental history as a field of study; this interest is explored in a forthcoming book in the field with Oxford University Press.

Major Publications

Canadians and their Natural Environments: Survival from 20,000 Years Ago to the Present. Forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Subsistence Under Capitalism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (edited with Dean Bavington and Carly Dokis). Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016.

Creating a Modern Countryside: Liberalism and Land Resettlement in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007. Winner of the K.D. Srivastava Prize for excellence in scholarly publishing.

“John Bull and Sons: The Empire Marketing Board and the Creation of an Imperial Food System,” in Franca Iacovetta, Valerie Korinek, and Marlene Epp, eds., Edible Histories: Towards a Canadian Food History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012).

I write for The Otter and tweet @jamiemurton.

Teaching

---

In all of my teaching I seek to engage students with history through experiential and active learning. This often focuses on getting outside in northern Ontario.

Courses Taught

Hist 1106 Food: A North American History

Hist 2166 Survival: Canada in Global Environmental History

Hist 2167 Bodies and Nature in the Environmental Era

Hist 3267 Food, Land and Subsistence in Canadian History

Hist 3297: Place and People in Rural Canada

Hist 4485 The Nature of Capitalism in Canada

Hist 5107 Canadian Environmental History (graduate course)