Biography
Dr. Jane Nicholas is a professor of History at St. Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo and an historian of gender and the modern body. She is the author of The Modern Girl (University of Toronto Press) and Canadian Carnival Freaks and the Extraordinary Body (University of Toronto Press) and the co-editor of two volumes of essays, Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History (University of Toronto Press) with Patrizia Gentile and Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education (Wilfrid Laurier University) with Tracy Penny Light and Renee Bondy. Her research has also been published in numerous journals and edited collections, including the Journal of Social History, the Canadian Historical Review, and Histoire sociale/Social History.
Her research has been recognized through several research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Her current SSHRC-funded project studies infanticide in the long nineteenth century. A recent collaboration with Nora Jaffary includes the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Social History on Infanticide in the Americas (expected Fall 2025).
Currently, she serves as the chair of the Canadian Committee on Women’s and Gender History.
Education
- BA Lakehead University, 1999
- MA Queen's University, 2000
- PhD University of Waterloo, 2007
Research and teaching interests
- History of the body in Canada
- Women's and gender history
- Feminist pedagogy