Hello! My name is Ian Milligan and I hold a PhD in Canadian History from York University in Toronto. In Winter 2012, I’ll be teaching a course titled “Canada’s 1960s” in the Department of Canadian Studies at Trent University [faculty page], and am also currently a Research Assistant/Consultant on “Translating History/Shaping Practice,” a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Knowledge Transfer (KT) project. I’m also a founding co-editor of the group blog at ActiveHistory.ca. Recently, I have been writing on innovative research methodologies and tools. Please check them out at this link (they are reprinted on my own web-page here). Finally, I also periodically blast my thoughts out to the world on twitter (@ianmilligan1).
The most recent build of my Top-40 Lyrics Database Viewer, which will be posted online as an interactive model this spring/summer. I've posted the code above as it's a good example of some of the Mathematica syntax. This is now is a very speedy and manipulable program (thanks to considerable pre-processing of word and phrase data), and I hope to have it online at some point during the Spring/Summer.
What does my current work focus on? My current project, tentatively titled “Postwar English-Canadian Youth Cultures: A Digital History, 1945-1990” applies digital humanities methodologies to the study of postwar Canadian history. I have a digital portfolio discussing these methods, which I encourage you to visit if you’re interested. These methods (some of which are discussed fleetingly on my blog) have the potential to access a much broader perspective on youth, pulling our lens out from the lives and activities of a small number of privileged and unrepresentative youth to gain a synoptic view of youth culture more generally. Please check out my current project page for more information!
What has my research dealt with? My doctoral dissertation, “Rebel Youth: Young Workers, New Leftists, and Labour in English Canada, 1964-1973“, argued that the Sixties needs to be understood through the prism of labour and the working-class. Other published work, discussed on my ‘articles‘ page, has dealt with the state more broadly. These works include a scholarly paper on the Spadina expressway and one on the trials and imprisonment of Isaac Bainbridge, a socialist newspaper editor in Toronto during the First World War. I also have two articles based on my dissertation.
And, of course, much of this is animated by my core belief: research is only as good as the way we disseminate it. We can do so either through conventional peer-reviewed publications, non-conventional online publications (both long reads and short posts), and – probably most importantly – in the classroom (as Ruth Sandwell put it evocatively on ActiveHistory.ca).
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me via e-mail at ianmilligan1@gmail.com.
