Dr. Josh MacFadyen
For more information see his Island Scholar profile page
Josh is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Geospatial Humanities at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada. His research focuses on energy transitions and traditional energy carriers in Canada, and he teaches Digital Humanities in the Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture (ACLC) program in UPEI’s Faculty of Arts. His most recent monograph is titled Flax Americana: A History of the Fibre and Oil that Covered a Continent. He also published an edited collection in the same series titled Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island (McGill-Queens and Island Studies Press, 2016). Josh is the founding director of the GeoREACH Lab, and he has held postdoctoral positions at the Historical GIS Lab at the University of Saskatchewan and at NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment at the University of Western Ontario. Most recently he was also an Assistant Professor and remains a Sustainability Scholar at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability.
Dr. Margot Maddison-MacFadyen
Margot joined the GeoREACH team as post-doctoral fellow in May 2021, having previously worked with Dr. Kirsten Greer, the Canada Research Chair for Global Environmental Histories and Geographies of the Semi-Periphery at Nipissing University, ON. She graduated in 2017 from the Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) with an Interdisciplinary PhD that crossed boundaries between subjects and faculties. Her non-traditional dissertation is titled, “Reclaiming Histories of Enslavement from the Maritime Atlantic and a Curriculum: The History of Mary Prince”, and she is working on a book about Mary Prince with Bermudian historian Dr. Clarence Maxwell (Millersville University), provisionally titled The Last Years of Mary Prince and the End of Enslavement, 1828-34. In 2018, Margot was also awarded a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, with her Banting research project titled: “Mind the Onion Seed!: The Bermuda Onion, Slave Narratives, Plant Knowledge and Seventeenth- to Twentieth-Century Commerce in the Global North Atlantic.”
Research Assistants
Bailey Clark is a history major who has been working in the GeoREACH lab since October 2019. He loves history, politics, and geography, and how they all interact and intermix. He is interested in learning more about the history of the Atlantic Canadian region, and how that history has been reflected in maps and how that history has been shaped by political decisions.
Nolan Kressin is a student in the Applied Climate Change and Adaptation program at UPEI. He has been working in the GeoREACH Lab since February 2019. His research interests currently include sustainable energy and the application of Geographic Information Systems to modern and historical climate data. He also loves cooking.
Amirah Oyesegun is a Foods and Nutrition major at UPEI. She has a specific interest in the role dietitians play in sustainable food systems. She has been working with the GeoREACH Lab since July 2019.
Reisha Vos recently graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in ACLC with a minor in French and now pursuing a Bachelor of Education degree in hopes of becoming an elementary teacher. She is continuing her work as Dr. MacFadyen’s editorial assistant for Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History.
Joe Kani is a History and ACLC major. He particularly likes research and archives. He loves history, especially Canadian history and music. Joe has been with the GeoReach Lab involved in various projects since January 2020.
Barbara Rousseau is entering her final year of the Bachelor of Integrated Studies Program with a concentration in Environmental Studies, but has become drawn to the ACLC program and Environmental History topics. She joined the GeoREACH Lab in June 2021.
Heather Spetifore is a 3rd year Psychology student at UPEI, heading into her Bachelor of Social Work at the University of Calgary. Heather joined the lab in June 2020 and is interested in how we interact with the land we occupy and how both our livelihoods and the land itself have transformed over time.
Trista Liang, an Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture major and History minor at UPEI joined the GeoREACH Lab in June 2021. She is interested in history and geography and is looking forward to learning more about PEI and Canada through the projects in the lab.
GeoREACH Alumni
Rowen Gallant is a fourth-year history student at UPEI. His research interests include post-colonial and labour history, and taken by a fascination with oral history and cultural studies born out of his lifelong passion for folklore and folk-music. He has assisted in GeoLab projects since January of 2021, concentrating on historical and archival research and writing. His work has predominantly involved analyzing farm journals from the late nineteenth-century in order to investigate the internal workings of small contemporary farm economies and communities.
Abigail (Abby) Craswell is a Psychology and Anthropology student at UPEI. She has a personal interest in agricultural history due to her family’s farming roots on Prince Edward Island. She has been a research assistant in the GeoREACH Lab since October 2018, working on the Average Beasts project, the Back 50 project, and the lab social media.
Choyce Chappell is a recent UPEI graduate with a degree in Environmental Studies, a minor in Computer science, and a minor in Diversity and Social Justice Studies. She first began volunteering with the lab when doing a directed studies with Dr. MacFadyen in January 2019. She is hoping to go to NSCC for an advanced diploma in GIS.
Alexandra Neumann
Alexandra worked in the GeoREACH Lab during the Fall 2019 semester as a visiting exchange student from Arizona State University. She is currently studying Sustainability and Conservation Biology. Her interest in agricultural history began with her research with Dr. MacFadyen on the energy history of PEI’s agriculture, and she continued this research while studying at UPEI. In the future, she would like to work in consulting and education for ecologically sustainable agriculture.
Nick Scott worked as a student research assistant at the GeoREACH Lab from October 2018 to August 2019 and subsequently worked on a contract with the lab in Winter 2020. A history graduate from UPEI, Nick’s work in the lab involved archival research, literature review, and writing. Most of his work focused on the Comprehensive Development Plan, and on the history of regional and rural development on PEI during the twentieth century. He is particularly interested in the role of expertise and technocracy in public administration and public policy.
Evan Lane is a third-year student in the ACLC program with a minor focusing on International Studies. He joined the GeoREACH Lab during the Summer of 2020 to work on the Geospatial Humanities e-Textbook.
Juliana Granzoti is a recent graduate of UPEI’s Environmental Studies program, and worked in the GeoREACH lab during the Spring 2019 semester. She worked on aerial photo analysis with the Time Flies project.
Catherine Kennedy worked in the GeoREACH Lab in the Spring 2019 semester on aerial photo analysis for the Time Flies project.
Miyah Mistal worked in the GeoREACH Lab during the 2018-2019 academic year. She worked on Heritage Farms research and the Average Beasts and where to Find Them project. She is a Sociology major.