Tina Adcock
Assistant Professor
Office: AQ 6236
Email: tina.adcock@sfu.ca
Bluesky:
Website:
Areas of Study: CANADA
Courses
Summer 2025
Future courses may be subject to change.
Biography
I was born and raised in Edmonton, a city traditionally regarded as the “gateway to the North.” I first became interested in northern history while pursuing my undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta, where I undertook research funded in part through the Canadian Circumpolar Institute. I then (somewhat counterintuitively) decided to continue my study of northern Canada in England, at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. After completing my PhD in 2010, I held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of British Columbia and Rutgers and a tenure-track appointment at the University of Maine. I joined SFU’s History department in 2014.
Research Interests
I am a cultural and environmental historian who draws inspiration from the cognate fields of historical geography and the history of science and technology. My research examines the relationship between colonialism, modernity, and the production of knowledge about Canada, with a special focus on the twentieth-century North. I have written , which will appear with UBC Press in June 2025. I have also edited . Present research interests include the history of northern field science, travel, and tourism; American military attempts to understand northern environments in the 1940s and 1950s; the intersection of southern ideas of North with settler colonialism and white supremacy in Canada; and fur trapping by sojourners and Indigenous peoples in northwestern Canada during the twentieth century. I am also exploring several new prospective areas of research, including energy history, the history of Alberta, and queer history.
Books
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A Cold Colonialism: Modern Exploration and the Canadian North
Vancouver: UBC Press, 2025 -
Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History
Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019 -
Landscapes of Science
Toronto: Network in Canadian History and Environment, 2019
Articles and Book Chapters
- "Scientist Tourist Sportsman Spy: Boundary-Work and the Putnam Eastern Arctic Expeditions.” In Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History, ed. Edward Jones-Imhotep and Tina Adcock. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018. 60-83.
- “.” In Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History, ed. Edward Jones-Imhotep and Tina Adcock. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018. 3-36. Co-authored with Edward Jones-Imhotep.
- “.” In Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History, ed. Stephen Bocking and Brad Martin. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2017. 131-77.
- “” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 27, no. 2 (2016): 1-39. Co-authored with Keith Grant, Stacy Nation-Knapper, Beth Robertson, and Corey Slumkoski.
- "The Maximum of Mishap: Adventurous Tourists and the State in the Northwest Territories, 1926-1948.” Histoire sociale/Social History 44, no. 99 (2016): 431-52.
- “Toward an Early Twentieth-Century Culture of Northern Canadian Exploration.” In North by Degree: New Perspectives on Arctic Exploration, ed. Susan A. Kaplan and Robert McCracken Peck. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2013. 109-41.
- “Auktoritet och expertis: Forskning, lokal kunskap och politik i Kanadas nordområden.” [“Expert authority in the early twentieth-century Canadian Arctic.” Polarår: Ymer 2009. 105-27. Published as Christina Sawchuk.
- “An Arctic Republic of Letters in Early Twentieth-Century Canada.” Nordlit 23 (2008): 273-92. Published as Christina Sawchuk.
Digital History
I have edited and published in collaborative academic blogs throughout my career. Since 2015, I have edited for , the blog of the . I am a past editor of The Otter~La loutre and of , The Champlain Society’s blog, and I occasionally publish pieces in various scholarly blogs relating to environmental and Canadian history. I reflect on my work in the academic blogosphere in . I am presently one of the editors of .
Areas of Graduate Supervision
Northern and circumpolar history; modern Canadian history; Canadian environmental history
Accepting new graduate students: yes
Awards, Grants and Honours
- Honourable Mention, Prize for the Best Edited Collection in Canadian Studies, Canadian Studies Network, 2019, for Made Modern
- Associate, L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History, McMaster University, 2017-20
- Cormack Teaching Award, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, SFU, 2018
- President’s Research Start-up Grant, Office of the Vice-President, Academic, SFU, 2014
- Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis postdoctoral fellowship, 2012-13
- SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, 2011-12
- SSHRC doctoral fellowship, 2008-09
- University of Cambridge Overseas Student Researchship, 2006
- Cambridge Commonwealth Trusts Canada Graduate Scholarship, 2006
- Sir James Lougheed Award of Distinction, 2006
- Mackenzie King Travelling Scholarship, 2006
- Governor General’s Silver Medal, 2005