In April 2022 in the midst of war, thousands of Ukrainians queued up not for food or fuel, but for a postage stamp. One of them, Victor Fyodorovich, told Guardian reporter Luke Harding. “I’m 63 years old. I’ve never felt so much pride before in our nation. It’s a symbol of our courage and steadfastness”. The stamp that provoked such strong emotions showed a Ukrainian soldier giving the finger to a Russian cruiser, a representation of a real event which the country’s president declared on Instagram “everyone has to get”. Social media ensured that news of the stamp spread across the world and it became the philatelic “must have” of 2022.
‘Philately in Troubled Times’ is designed to enhance our understanding of how postage stamps have and continue to play a vital role in shaping national identity through their commemoration of historical events. Professor David Dean is principle investigator of this SSHRC-funded project. The objective is not only to generate new knowledge for the scholarly community but to
bridge the gap between academic scholarship and the very large, and increasingly diverse, global
community of philatelists and stamp collectors by embracing broader strategies of knowledge
mobilization. By demonstrating the value of applying historical theories and methods to
philately, the project aims to encourage collectors to think more critically about what is being
commemorated on stamps, how this came about, and the motivations behind collecting and
exhibiting. The goal is to establish trust, discussion, and dialogue by producing historical work –
a global database, checklists, case-studies – that will excite collectors, make an original
contribution to historical knowledge, and constitute a critical intervention in the field of public
history through by adopting a “citizen science of the past” approach. Ultimately, we hope this
will lead to future community-scholarly collaborations and co-productions in Canada and
beyond.
In Spring 2025 Carleton graduate students Declan Da Barp (EURUS), Charlie Ham (Public
History), Charlotte Johnson (Public History), Joy Karinge (African Studies), Trevor Peeters
(EURUS), Patricia Rousell (Public History), and Jamie Wood (Public History) created the first
spreadsheet identifying the first historical commemorative stamps issued by every country in the
world, past and present. Between October 2025 and June 2026 the spreadsheet will be analyzed
by the project team, transformed into an interactive database, and work will begin on a number
of case studies. The team’s work will be facilitated by Project Manager Anna Kozlova, a PhD
candidate in the Department of History.
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