2011 Trudeau Fellow

Profile

Ronald Rudin, who earned both his MA and PhD from York University, is a professor of history at Concordia University. He engages in research that touches upon the economic, social, intellectual and cultural history of French Canada. The author of six books and producer of two documentary films, he is a public historian who has long had an interest in how the larger population comes to understand the past. This focus is particularly evident in his book, Remembering and Forgetting in Acadie: A Historian's Journey through Public Memory and the associated website: rememberingacadie.concordia.ca, winner of both the 2010 book award of the National (U.S.) Council on Public History and the inaugural public history prize of the Canadian Historical Association (2011). This project-which reflects on how Acadians and their neighbours have engaged with the past-also led to Dr Rudin's production of the documentary film Life After Île Ste-Croix, made in conjunction with Leo Aristimuño and distributed by the National Film Board of Canada. He is also the producer of Remembering a Memory/Mémoire d'un souvenir, a documentary film that deals with the Celtic Cross on Grosse-Île and explores shifting memories in Quebec of the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. This project was carried out in collaboration with Robert McMahon and is available at rememberingamemory.concordia.ca.

Rudin's continued interest in the public memory of Acadians is evident in his current research that sits at the intersection of public, cultural and environmental history by exploring both the history and memory of the establishment of Kouchibouguac National Park in New Brunswick, whose creation in 1969 led to the expropriation of over 200 (mostly Acadian) families.
 
A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 2009, Dr Rudin has been both Chair of the History Department at Concordia and a Concordia University Research Fellow. He was also the Academic Convenor for the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held at Concordia in 2010.

Trudeau Foundation Themes