The J.J. Talman Lecture Series
Speaker: Kristina Llewellyn, Professor, McMaster University
Title: Developing Our Historical Consciousness to Confront Polarized Politics in Ontario Today
Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025
Time: 2:30PM - 4:00PM, Reception to follow
Location: Great Hall, Somerville House
Our 2024-2025 Speaker
Professor Kristina Llewellyn, McMaster University
Dr. Kristina R. Llewellyn is Full Professor of History and the Wilson College of Leadership and Civic Engagement at McMaster University. Llewellyn is one of Canada’s leading scholars in history, education, and justice, and an internationally recognized expert in oral history and research-creation. She is the project director of the SSHRC grant Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation: The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children History Education Initiative. She is also an Executive Member of the SSHRC project Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future. She is the award-winning author and co-editor of five books, including Democracy's Angels: The Work of Women Teachers (MQUP, 2012), The Canadian Oral History Reader (MQUP, 2015), Oral History, Education, and Justice (Routledge, 2019) and Women, Gender, and History Education (Palgrave, 2024). Llewellyn is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada
How can history best contribute to the development of citizens who can engage constructively with others in political life? This presentation tackles this question by examining what it means to develop our historical consciousness towards a more just future. Drawing upon research in history education and civic engagement, this presentation will address what justice-centered historical consciousness can offer for confronting polarized politics in Ontario today, including commemorative controversies and the redress of historical harms.
About the J.J. Talman Lecture Series
Presented by the Department of History and Western Libraries
The J.J. Talman Lecture Series focuses on Ontario history, Ontario regional collections and innovative uses thereof, or previously unstudied aspects of Canadian history.
Reflecting the breadth of Dr. Talman’s career at Western, as a respected historian and Chief Librarian, the lectures are organized annually by a joint committee comprised of representatives from the Department of History and Western Libraries.
The J.J. Talman Lecture Series was envisioned and is funded by Raj Jain, Librarian Emerita, and her brother, Dr. Sushil Jain, in gratitude for Dr. Talman’s many personal kindnesses, and to recognize his substantial contribution to Western.
Past Talman Lectures
| Year | Lecturer | Lecture Title |
| 2025 | Prof. Kristina Llewellyn | Developing Our Historical Consciousness to Confront Polarized Politics in Ontario Today |
| 2024 | Dr. Lori Chambers | Legal Story-Telling: Case Files and the Historian |
| 2023 | Dr. Kevin Spooner | Canada's Peacekeeping History: Symbols, Contradictions, and Hard Truths |
| 2022 | Prof. Linda Mahood | The Legend of the Wawa Hitchhiker: Youth Mobility in the Hippie Generation |
| 2020 | Dr. David Koffman | Unsettling Ethnic History: Jewish Indigenous Encounters in Canada |
| 2019 | Dr. Barrington Walker | The Honourable Leonard Braithwaite: The Imprint of a Black Canadian Legal Pioneer on the History of Modern Ontario |
| 2017 | Prof. Constance Backhouse | Viola Desmond: Her Historic Challenge to Race Segregation in Canada and Her Appearance on Our $10 Note |
| 2015 | Prof. Jane Errington | 'A burthen to the community'? J.B. Hawke and Managing Migration to Upper Canada |
| 2013 | Prof. Alan Taylor | Settling and Unsettling Borders: Continental Legacies of the War of 1812. |
| 2012 | Dr. Cecilia Morgan | "Among the Six Nations": Celia B File and the Politics of Writing Memory, History and Home in Southern Ontario, 1920s-1960s |
| 2011 | Dr. Tim Cook | Ghosts from the Trenches: Stories of the Supernatural and the Uncanny among Canada's Great War Trench Soldiers |
| 2009 | Dr. Carl Benn | Mohawks in the Sudan War, 1884-85 |
| 2008 | Dr. Peter Neary | From War to Peace: Canada in the 1940s |
Accessibility
Please contact us at history-inquiries@uwo.ca if you require information in an alternate format, or if any other arrangements can make this event accessible to you. For a campus accessibility map please visit: http://www.accessibility.uwo.ca/resources/maps/index.html.
