Saturday, 11 December,
12-1pm (6th floor lounge) and 1-4pm (room 2-279),
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario

NiCHE is a project to develop a network of scholars working in Canadian environmental history. We have received preliminary funding through a Strategic Research Clusters Design Grant from the Social Science and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

NiCHE will employ new technologies for online collaboration, drawing together historians, geographers, and other scholars from both inside and outside Canada to create new research programs, construct web-accessible databases, and define methodological approaches. And NiCHE will seek out environmental scientists and policymakers to ensure that the network will be developed in such a way as to have the greatest possible value and accessibility to those most likely to utilize historical sources and findings in shaping current and future practice. NiCHE’s web home can be found at the address provided below [under construction].

In December and January, our project team will be hosting roundtables across Canada to introduce NiCHE and to seek input from the community of scholars interested in history and nature. You are invited to attend the first roundtable on Saturday, 11 December, 1-4pm, in room 2-279, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, following the Quelques Arpents de Neige Environmental History Workshop. Please note that, preceding the roundtable, lunch will be provided for all attendees, in OISE’s 6th floor lounge between noon-1pm.

(Subsequent roundtables will be held in Fredericton on 8 January, Vancouver on 20 January, and Trois-Rivières on a date yet to be determined. Details on these will follow.)

The roundtables will encourage two forms of participation by the environmental history community:

• First, general feedback as to NiCHE’s longterm development. What should a Canadian environmental history network look like? What should it do? What should it seek to accomplish? What should its governance be?
• Second, specific involvement in NiCHE’s immediate development. One planned component of NiCHE is the use of Groove software - see www.groove.net -to create collaborative online workspaces. At the roundtables, we will be putting out a call for two methodological papers to be developed using this software over the winter of 2005; the papers will be web-published in the spring to demonstrate the network’s potential to SSHRC and to the scholarly community.

For more information on NiCHE, please contact Alan MacEachern or any other member of the NiCHE project team.

For more information on local arrangements for the Toronto roundtable, please contact Colin Coates at CCoates@gl.yorku.ca.

The NiCHE project team are
Stéphane Castonguay (Chaire de Recherche du Canada en Histoire Environnementale du Québec, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières),
Colin Coates (Canada Research Chair in Canadian Cultural Landscapes, York University),
Matthew Evenden (Geography, University of British Columbia),
Alan MacEachern (History, University of Western Ontario),
William Turkel (History, University of Western Ontario).