The study of Canada is one of our foremost areas of expertise. Employing new approaches, our researchers seek to better understand the historical forces that have shaped modern Canada and have contributed to the debates that inform our society. To foster citizen engagement, they focus particularly on the study of l’Amérique française and on Indigenous history. Our affiliated researchers work in a variety of areas, including social and cultural history, intellectual history, immigration history, military history, labour history, and the history of international relations, from the Middle Ages to today.

Our researchers use gender not only as a tool of analysis but also as an innovative approach to study human relations, behaviors, and identities. The fields of history of sexuality and history of the body have developed their own set of conceptual devices to further our understanding of what it means to be human. With topics covering areas such as the legal control of procreation, the involvement of women in decolonization movements, women in sports, businesswomen and economic interactions, psychiatric care, human trafficking and family relations, our collective effort is pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

Questions linked to imperialism, colonialism, and their legacies cut across temporal and geographic boundaries. They tie together histories of imperial powers with those of the territories they colonized. Researchers in this cluster cover a wide variety of topics, such as environmental change, identity formation, struggles for human and political rights, migrations and diaspora, imperial expansion and conquest, decolonization, sovereignty and indigeneity. Cluster researchers draw on methods from cultural, legal, gender, intellectual, comparative, environmental, political, and social history.

Law and legal systems cast light on ideologies, political processes, and cultural interactions. Our researchers consider the social significance, traditions, processes and historical changes in law, legal institutions, legal culture and jurisprudence. They recognize law as a malleable language invoked by historical actors from the Middle Ages to the present. Legal historians analyze the ways individuals, organizations, communities, and states used and experienced the law. They study how people and societies engage the law to regulate, mediate, control, and contest, and consider legal pluralisms and legal incompatibilities that emerged with the entanglement of systems of law.

The chair seeks to create a vibrant academic and research environment for Faculty members, guest researchers, undergraduate and graduate students working on Slovak history and culture both in Europe and North America. It promotes and disseminates research on Slovak history and culture to a wider audience and foster ongoing dialogue between the academia, the media and the wider public and strengthens academic and non-academic links between Slovakia and North America.