Michael Dove

- Assistant Professor
- Director & Internship Coordinator, M.A. Public History Field

photo of Mike Dove
PhD, The University of Western Ontario, 2007
Certificate Documentary Filmmaking, New York Film Academy (NYFA), 2023  
Telephone: 519-661-2111 ext. 84996
Email: mdove2@uwo.ca
Office: Lawson Hall 1207
Office Hours: Mondays, 1:00pm-3:00pm
Michael Dove on LinkedIN

Research Interests

Professor Dove specializes in public history, Canadian sports history, the history of beer and brewing, and the business and social history of the global maritime world in the Early Modern Period (c.1500-1800). He is especially interested in the operation of commercial trading companies including the Hudson’s Bay Company, as well as the growth and decline of piracy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His current research projects include London’s historic Labatt Memorial Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world, the history of hockey in the Forest City, and the history of Canada's O-Pee-Chee Company.

Teaching Experience

Professor Dove’s teaching encompasses his interests in business history, Canadian history, maritime history and public history. At the undergraduate level, he teaches courses on the history of beer and brewing throughout world history, as well as on the history of pirates and piracy from antiquity to the present. Among other courses he has taught at Western are the Canadian history survey course, an interdisciplinary course on the sea, and a senior history course on the maritime history of the North Atlantic in the Age of Sail. Professor Dove has also held teaching appointments with Huron University College and Western’s DAN Program in Management and Organizational Studies, where he taught courses on Globalization, Organizational Behaviour, and Human Resources Management.

He continues to serve as the Director and Internship Coordinator for Western’s Public History field and teaches courses in both the MA field and Minor Program in Public History.

Recent Projects

Article: ’A nest of little pedlars’? The New England Coasting Trade to Newfoundland,” for The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord (in progress).

Book (co-authored): O-Pee-Chee: An Oral History of an Iconic Canadian Brand (working title; in progress)

Documentary Film: Packaging Fun: Canada's O-Pee-Chee Company (working title; in progress).
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/remember-o-pee-chee-this-researcher-might-want-to-talk-to-you-1.7074326
https://history.uwo.ca/news/2024/Sweet%20smell%20of%20gum%20Western%20prof%20collecting%20stories%20of%20the%20iconic%20O-Pee-Chee%20Company.html

Guide: Creating Great Walking Tours, for the American Association for State and Local History/ AASLH #306 (2025)

Review: Angus Konstam. The Pirate Menace. Uncovering the Golden Age of Piracy (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2024), for The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord (forthcoming).

Professor Dove has co-authored several recent works:

Best Practices for Creating Sustainable Public History Class Projects, for the National Council on Public History (NCPH) Working Group on Experiential Learning (2024).

With Michelle Hamilton, "Public History in Canada: Public Service or public service?" in Paul Ashton and Alex Trapeznik, eds., What is Public History Globally? (Bloomsbury, 2019), 37-49.

Danielle Kinsey, “Take Five with Michelle Hamilton and Mike Dove,” Canadian Historical Association (14 April 2019): https://cha-shc.ca/?s=dove&lang=en

With Krista McCracken, Get to Work: Crafting Cover Letters and Resumes for Emerging Professionals. Technical Leaflet #281, American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), 2018.

Community Projects

Professor Dove has contributed to, and supervised, several collaborative projects between Western’s Public History MA field and Minor program and community partners, including:

Exhibits:

 

Online Exhibits:

 

Historical Walking Tours:

 

Oral History Projects:

  • A Driving Force: Women of the London, Ontario, Visual Arts Community, 1867 to the Present, with Western University’s McIntosh Gallery, https://mcintoshdrivingforce.ca/
  • American Immigration to Canada for The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21,

https://news.westernu.ca/2016/02/asking-what-brought-them-over-the-49th-2/

https://www.pier21.ca/research/oral-history/immigration-from-the-united-states-of-america-during-the-vietnam-war

https://www.pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/to-canada-and-back-again-immigration-from-the-united-states-on-the-underground-railroad-1840

https://www.pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/the-gold-rush-in-british-columbia-and-the-yukon

https://www.pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/the-forgotten-immigrants-the-journey-of-the-new-england-planters-to-nova-scotia-1759-1768

Smartphone App:


Selected Publications

  • Review: Kerry Jang, ShipCraft: Bounty – HM Armed Vessel 1787 (Seaforth, 2023), for The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord.33, Nos. 3-4 (Fall/Winter 2023), 525-526.
  • Review: Frederick C. Leiner, Prisoners of the Bashaw: The Nineteenth-Month Captivity of American Sailors in Tripoli, 1803-1805 (Westholme, 2022), for The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord. 33, No. 2 (Summer 2023), 312-314.
  • Review: Sarah Craze, Atlantic Piracy in the Early Nineteenth Century. The Shocking Story of the Pirates and the Survivors of the Morning Star (Boydell, 2022), for The Northern Mariner / Le Marin Du Nord, 32, No. 3 (Autumn 2022), 394 -396.
  • Review: Brewed in the North: A History of Labatt’s (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019) by Matthew J. Bellamy, for The Prospectus: The Newsletter of the Canadian Business History Association (2021).
  • Review: A World at Sea: Maritime Practices and Global History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) by Lauren Benton and Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (eds.), for Histoire sociale / Social History (2021).
  • Review: The Golden Age of Piracy: The Rise, Fall and Enduring Popularity of Pirates (The University of Georgia Press, 2018) by David Head, for The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord. Vol. XXVIII, No. 3 (Summer 2018), 247-248.
  • Review: The History of Pirates (London: Amber, 2017) by Brenda Ralph Lewis, for H-Caribbean (2018).
  • Review: British Pirates and Society, 1680-1730 (Ashgate, 2014) by Margarette Lincoln, for H-Albion (2016).
  • Review: Enlightened Zeal: The Hudson’s Bay Company and Scientific Networks, 1670-1870 (University of Toronto Press, 2014) by Ted Binnema, for The Historian. Vol. 78, No. 3 (2016), 559-60.
  • Review: Imperial Landscapes: Britain’s Global Visual Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011) by John E. Crowley, for The Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire. Vol. 49 (Spring 2014), 166-67.
  • Review: A Fleeting Empire: Early Stuart Britain and the Merchant Adventurers to Canada (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010) by Andrew D. Nicholls, for the International Journal of Maritime History (IJMH). XXIII, No. 1 (June 2011), 358-59.
  • Chapter: “Plying the Northernmost Atlantic Trading Route to the New World: The Hudson’s Bay Company and British Seaborne Empire,” in Nancy L. Rhoden, ed., English Atlantics Revisited: Essays Honouring Professor Ian K. Steele (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 174-205.

Community Service

Professor Dove sits on the Board of Directors for the Museum of Ontario Archaeology (Chair) and the Ontario Historical Society (First Vice-President; Chair, Honours & Awards Committee). 

Awards and Distinctions

London Heritage Awards - Local History Award for Labatt Park Tours (2023)

The Vice-Provost (Academic Programs) Award for Excellence in Collaborative Teaching (2018)