The GeoREACH Lab supports Geospatial Research in Atlantic Canadian History and other projects of the Applied, Communications, Leadership & Culture (ACLC) program in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prince Edward Island.

The GeoREACH Team in Fall 2019. (L-R Amirah, Abby, Alexandra, Nolan, and Josh)

The Director of the lab is Dr. Joshua MacFadyen, Canada Research Chair in Geospatial Humanities and faculty member in the ACLC program. In 2019 the lab members included UPEI students Choyce Chappell, Bailey Clark, Abby Craswell, Nolan Kressin, and Amirah Oyesegun, visiting student and Killam Fellow Alexandra Neumann, and former student Nick Scott.

The Lab’s current projects focus on the history of food and agriculture in Canada, and we study the ways that the modern food system has shaped our relationships with animals and the land. Prince Edward Island was a relative late adapter of modern industrial agriculture, and in many ways it is still going through this profound social-ecological transition. This presents an opportunity to interview, map, and otherwise study the causes and impacts of agro-ecosystem transformation in one place over time.

In 2020 students are working on several studies including:

• 

  The Hedgerow Project

  The Back 50 Project (on how Prince Edward Islanders valued landscapes and remember how they changed in the half-century since the 1969 Comprehensive Development Plan)

• The Hedgerow Project (on hedgerows, fields, and land use in the 20th century)
• The “Average Beasts” Project (on mapping domestic animals and biomass in the energy transition)
• Other energy transitions in Canadian history

In spring 2019, Alex MacIsaac wrote an article about the GeoREACH Lab. Check it out here

In December 2019, Zac Metcalfe featured GeoLab Director Dr Josh MacFadyen in Rural Delivery magazine. Check out the article here.