Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

News from Berkeley

• Hildebrand Fellow Andrew Zhao explores legacy of residential schools on local voting patterns

• Hildebrand Fellow Lydia Mathews probes British Columbia’s public health campaign against prostitution

Academic Opportunities

• Postdoctoral Position in Migration Studies, IRI (Concordia University)

NEWS FROM BERKELEY

Hildebrand Fellow Andrew Zhao Explores Legacy of Residential Schools on Local Voting Patterns

The Canadian Studies Program is pleased to announce that returning graduate fellow Andrew Zhao has received an Edward E. Hildebrand Research Fellowship for Summer 2025.

Andrew is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science, studying how identity and questions of who we are intersect with politics.

Andrew’s Hildebrand Fellowship will support a project exploring the long-term political effects of Canada’s Indian residential school system. The schools left a well-documented legacy of physical and psychological harm to survivors and their kin. But another legacy remains under-explored: how did residential schools affect the politics of their surrounding communities? Andrew’s current project focuses on this political legacy. Specifically, it investigates whether residential schools embedded anti-Indigenous beliefs in nearby communities that persist to this day. Fellowship funds will support visits to several Canadian archives that contain school records and testimony, as well as French-language interpretation of school administrators’ personal papers.

Andrew holds a BA in political science and philosophy from the University of Toronto, where he received the Suzanne and Edwin Goodman Prize as the top graduating student specializing in political science. Before coming to Berkeley, he worked for several years in public opinion research.

Hildebrand Fellow Lydia Mathews Probes British Columbia’s Public Health Campaign Against Prostitution

Previous Hildebrand recipient Lydia Matthews has also received a Summer 2025 Fellowship to continue exploring the history of public health and social belonging in Canada.

Lydia is a PhD candidate in the Department of History. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, public health, and immigration at the turn of the 20th century. She is particularly interested in public health campaigns against prostitution and how such campaigns, in conjunction with various hygiene reform projects, helped to delineate a transnational understanding of social citizenship.

Lydia’s research will explore connections between the Canadian National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases (CNCCVD) and American attempts to eliminate the spread of sexually transmitted diseases during World War I. Her research will center on local anti-prostitution efforts and their enforcement in British Columbia at both the municipal and provincial level. The Hildebrand Fellowship will support her travel to Ottawa to conduct archival research at the Library and Archives Canada, as well as to the Vancouver City Archives and Vancouver Police Museum & Archives.

Lydia holds a bachelor’s degree in English and history from Vassar College and master’s degrees in women’s and gender studies and history from Brandeis University.

ACADEMIC OPPORTUNITIES

Postdoctoral Position in Migration Studies, IRI (Concordia University)

Application deadline: August 1, 2025

The Immigration Research Initiative, based in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal, is pleased to announce a two-year postdoctoral position. The postdoctoral researcher will work under the supervision of Dr. Antoine Bilodeau, contributing to various projects within the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) program, Migrant Integration in the Mid-21st Century: Bridging Divides. Researchers specializing in migration studies and/or behavioural studies (in any social science discipline) with experience in advanced quantitative research are invited to apply. Applicants may start from September 2025 (negotiable).

This position requires bilingualism (French and English) as well as advanced skills in quantitative analysis. Please click here for more information. For questions regarding this position, please contact Ludmilla Moindrot-Zilliox at iri@concordia.ca.

Canadian Studies Program

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