Over the last few months of my dissertation writing process at the end of 2023, I began to draft the final chapter of my dissertation. The final chapter reconstructed the household and larger web of relationships created by Mère d’Youville and the Grey Nuns of Montréal. It fit into my larger project, which traced the familial and economic networks created by three generations of four French families, each involved in distinct enterprises that were emblematic of colonial Montr

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to give a presentation about my dissertation research, with a particular focus on one household that I reconstructed, and the ways that it is related to my newer research, which examines and compares the growth of geospatial knowledge of the Great Lakes region in North America and France. I began by taking us back to seventeenth century Montréal. Nicolas Sanson – Le Canada et Nouvelle France (1656) (Showing Montréal’s central positi

In March 2025, I had the opportunity to visit the American Philosophical Society as a David Center for the American Revolution International Fellow to conduct research for a new project. The goal of this project is to explore the growth of geographic knowledge in North America and its relationship to the evolution of map-making and cartographic comprehension of the Great Lakes in Europe. While at the APS, with the help of the wonderful reference staff, librarians, and experts