Chair of the Program and Center

Matthew Evenden is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He is also the Chair of the International Canadian Studies Centre and the Program in Canadian Studies. Beyond UBC, Evenden is co-director of the Canadian Water History Project/ Projet sur l’histoire de l’eau au Canada (with Stéphane Castonguay), and a founding member of the Network in Canadian History and Environment/ Nouvelle initiative canadienne en histoire de l’environnement.

Evenden’s research deals with the environmental history of large river development. Some of his major publications include Fish versus Power: An Environmental History of the Fraser River (Cambridge UP 2004) which received a Clio Prize from the Canadian Historical Association, and The River Returns: An Environmental History of the Bow, co-authored with Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2009). Urban Rivers: Re-making Cities, Rivers and Space in Europe and North America, co-edited with Stéphane Castonguay, will appear in 2012 with the University of Pittsburgh Press. He is currently working on a book manuscript, War and Waterpower, an examination of hydro-electric power development in Canada during the Second World War. Other projects include an environmental history of Vancouver’s water supply and a study of hydro development conflicts in northern British Columbia. In 2008, Evenden was appointed as an early career scholar of the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies, UBC. In 2011 he received a UBC Killam teaching prize.