Juno Beach Centre awards fellowship to King's history students
November 1, 2019
As announced October 1, 2019 students in a unique new experiential history course at King’s University College have been awarded the prestigious Juno Beach Centre Fellowship. The upper-year course, The World Wars in History, Memory, and Reconciliation, includes an overseas program in France and Belgium following a term of classroom studies in 2020.
This is the first time the prestigious Fellowship has been awarded to a group. There will be 20 students who split the $5,000 award to help offset the costs of the course.
“The Juno Beach Centre Association is proud to award the 2019/2020 Juno Beach Centre Fellowship to an exceptional group of students from King’s University College in London, Ontario. The students' efforts to uncover the historical connections between London and Normandy will culminate with a visit to the Juno Beach Centre on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. The experience will connect these bright Canadian youth with a sacred piece of Canada in France that commemorates the efforts of men and women – many the same age as these students – who put their lives on hold to fight for a better world,” says Don Cooper, President, the Juno Beach Centre Association.
The new course was designed by Dr. Graham Broad, Associate Professor of History at King’s and Katrina Pasierbek ’12, PhD candidate in History and King’s alumna, Catholic Studies for Teachers with an honours specialization in History. Both have extensive backgrounds in World War history. Dr. Broad has published two recent books, One in a Thousand: the Life and Death of Captain Eddie McKay, Royal Flying Corps and A Small Price to Pay: Consumer Culture on the Canadian Home Front, 1939-1945 which align with his teaching goals of helping students see the local connections to the world wars. A public historian, Professor Pasierbek has extensive experiences as a battlefield guide and as a member of international research teams who study the caves beneath the Western Front.
The students will be overseas from April 30th to May 12th 2020.
“The Juno Beach Centre is one of Canada’s premier historical institutions and we’re very proud to be partnering with them for our course,” says Dr. Broad. “Not only will the JBC Fellowship assist the students financially, it will give us access to the Centre’s incredible staff and their resources in Normandy. This will offer the class unparalleled learning opportunities while overseas," he adds.
As part of the course there will be an exhibit at King’s in November 2020 on the relationship between London, Ontario and the Juno Beach battlegrounds, including representations of the people of the region, and items from the town and the battle of Normandy in summer of 1944.
Interested people can follow the students' journey via social media: Twitter @history_kings #JunoFellowship #HistoryFieldSchool and Instagram @history_at_kings, as well as the Juno Beach Centre Podcast: http://www.junobeach.org/podcast/ and Juno Beach Centre social media: Facebook: @JunoBeachCentre Twitter: @JunoBeachCentre Instagram: @junobeachcentre
For more information about History at King’s, please visit https://www.kings.uwo.ca/academics/history/. For more information about the Juno Beach Centre Fellowship please visit https://www.junobeach.org/?s=fellowship