Director, Institute of Canadian Studies
Faculty of Arts

- Examining the role of language in the making of today's modern society -

Dr. Gaffield's research is part of an international effort to provide historical perspective on current debate about the role of language in social, economic, cultural, and political change.

How is the role of language at the time of the British North America Act connected to the origins of later 20th century developments, such as the Official Languages Act, French immersion schooling, provincial language policies, and terms such as anglophones, francophones and allophones? Related issues include language transfer, bilingualism, and language diversity during the decades of intense immigration, agricultural development, urbanization and industrialization.

The award of a University Research Chair (URC) will support Dr. Gaffield's research project, which will include both historical knowledge and public policy debate. Social scientists and policy makers are increasingly realizing that historical perspectives are valuable in thinking about the future. Taken together, these research results should contribute significantly to enhancing current analyses of the making of modern Canada.

The Canadian experience is of considerable interest internationally in terms of debates about the changing character of language with respect to nation-building, identity, and socio-economic patterns, since Canada is one of the few countries that includes two world-encompassing international languages as major mother tongues. Therefore, Canada represents an excellent "laboratory" for the study of the language questions that are at the heart of current international debate in diverse corners of the world. Since the historical evidence about language is more extensive for Canada than for any other country in the world, Dr. Gaffield is planning unprecedented analyses concerning the changing interrelationships of policy and practice among individuals, families, households, communities, institutions, and jurisdictions.

In 2002, Dr. Gaffield was named Professor of the Year at the University of Ottawa to recognize excellence in teaching. He is a highly successful and innovative educator, whose former graduate students include the only history student to have ever won the Governor General's Gold Medal for Doctoral Studies at the University of Ottawa, the only Ph.D. in history now working at the National Research Council of Canada, as well as current professors at universities from Victoria to Halifax.

Dr. Gaffield has successfully launched the Institute for Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa and quickly made it a key institution for Canadian studies. He is the lead researcher in the Canadian Century Research Infrastructure (CCRI), one of the most comprehensive humanities and social science research projects ever undertaken in Canada. Throughout his academic career, he has been at the cutting edge of systematic social science history in Canada. He is a world-class scholar and institution-builder whose impact on the field of Canadian Studies will be immense.