Professor Emerita (Non Budgetary Cross Appointment)
Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Canada
Areas of Interest
social history of rural Canada; social history of energy; history of education and history pedagogy, women's history
Biography
R.W. (Ruth) Sandwell is a Professor Emerita in the History Department and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She is historian of rural Canada, and has researched and published extensively on the social history of energy. As a history educator, was a founding and educational director of the online history education platform, The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History, was a founding and executive council member of The History Education Network/Histoire et Éducation en Réseau and has published in the field of history education, both as a historian and a history educator
Education
Simon Fraser University,1998
Awards
- 2021 Chancellor Jackman Research Fellow in the Humanities Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto
- 2019 Fellow, Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany
- 2018 Article of the Year Award for 2018 by the Petroleum History Society. R.W. Sandwell, “The Coal-Oil Lamp” Agricultural History, v. 92, no. 2, pp. 190-209
- 2016 The Canadian Studies Network – Réseau d'études canadiennes 2017 Prize for Best Edited Collection, for R.W. Sandwell, ed. owering Up Canada: A History of Power, Fuel and Energy from 1600 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press
- 2016 One of three finalists for 2016 SSHRC Impact “Connection” Award for the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History 2008 Pierre Berton Prize for Canadian Public History for the educational website series The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History
- Fellow of the Agricultural History Society appointed by Presidents’ Committee, in recognition of contributions to the field of agricultural and rural history
Publications
- “Ivan Illich, Gender and Energy” (University of Toronto Press : 2023)
- “Changing the Plot: Including Women in Energy History (and explaining why they were missing),” (McGill-Queen’s University Press : 2021)
- In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press : 2021)
- “The History Education Network: an Experiment in Knowledge Mobilization” (London: Palgrave Macmillan : 2020)
- Powering Up Canada: The History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600 (McGill-Queen’s University Press : 2016)
- Canada's Rural Majority: Households, Environments, and Economies, 1870-1940 (University of Toronto Press : 2016)
- Becoming a History Teacher: Sustaining Practices in Historical Thinking and Knowing (Toronto: University of Toronto Press : 2014)