From July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2013, the McLean Chair is Professor Graeme Wynn from the Department of Geography. He has conducted research in all parts of Canada and published extensively in both geography and history, as well as in a range of other venues. For almost forty years, he has sought to understand human transformations of the earth. The core of his work has always been interdisciplinary, rooted in geography and history and engaged with the environmental sciences. Over time his early interests in eastern Canada broadened to encompass New Zealand and the rest of Canada. In each of these realms his work has turned on the histories and geographies of forest exploitation, conservation, preservation and management. He is currently working on a book to be published under the title Peopling British North America, and his Canadian Studies 450 seminar in 2012 will offer an interdisciplinary engagement with “Migration: Movement, Memory, and Myth in the development of Canada.”
During his tenure, Graeme Wynn will explore the development of environmentalism in Canada since the 1960s, and he will give a series of 3 distinguished lectures on this topic—tentatively titled “Greening the Great White North”—in the spring of 2013.
Wynn is the author of over eighty articles and chapters as well as several books, including: Canada and Arctic North America: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Press, 2007); A Scholar’s Guide to Geographical Writing on the American and Canadian Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), with M. Conzen and T. Rumney; Vancouver and Its Region (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1992), edited with T.R. Oke; People Places Patterns Processes: Geographical Perspectives on the Canadian Past (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman Ltd.,1990), editor; and Timber Colony. A historical geography of early nineteenth century New Brunswick (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1981).
Wynn is the founding General Editor of the Nature|History| Society book series, published by UBC Press (16 to date), and also serves as editor of BC Studies and as co-editor of the Journal of Historical Geography.
A faculty member at UBC since 1976, Wynn was Associate Dean of Arts between 1990 and 1996 (with responsibility for Student Affairs, University College Liaison, Curriculum, the UBC-Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto) Academic Exchange Program, and UBC’s participation in the Canadian University Study Abroad Program at the International Study Centre, Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex, England). He served two terms as Head of the Department of Geography (1996-2002 and 2006-2010), and is currently Chair of the UBC Press Publications Board.
Wynn has held distinguished senior visiting research fellowships at St John’s College and St Catherine’s College, Oxford, and at Emmanuel College Cambridge as well as research Fellowships at the University of Otago, Melbourne, and Australian National University. A member of the Royal Society of Canada he has also received the Dean of Arts Award, the Killam Research prize, and (twice) the UBC AMS Just Desserts Award (for service to students).
