Our Graduates

You will find our graduates working close to home in Ottawa, across Canada, and as far afield as India. They have found jobs in every conceivable type of public history work from federal, provincial and local archives to national and local museums, heritage houses and living history sites, corporations and non-profit organizations, and of course in academic institutions and government agencies. Some have set themselves up as contract researchers and editors, and several have gone on to do PhDs, not just here in Canada but also in the United States.

These recordings were made as phase one of the Carleton Centre for Public History’s Alumni Project where current students interview graduates from the program.

All the interviewers noted below are now themselves graduates. And this is just the beginning.

We are rolling out phase two over the next few months and well as profiles of all of our alumni and alumna so be sure to check back soon for more stories.

Alex Comber (now Military Archivist, Library and Archives Canada) talks with Lina Compton (now Program Officer, SSHRC).

Tom Bigelow (then Curatorial Assistant and now Procedural Clerk, House of Commons) and Natascha Morrison (researcher for Contentworks Inc) talk with Anna Kuntz (now Senior Associate, Know History)

Emily Lonie (then archivist with Library and Archives Canada and now City Archivist at the City of Coquitlam, BC) talks with Lauren Markewicz (now working at Elk Island National Park, Alberta and a noted blogger at History Research Shenanigans)

Joel Legassie (now completing his PhD on Japanese history at the University of Victoria) talks with Meghan Lundrigan (now completing her PhD on the holocaust and visual social media at Carleton).

Angela Beking (now Archival Assistant, Library and Archives Canada) talks to Sinead Cox (now Curator of Engagement and Dialogue at the Huron County Museum and Historic Gaol and one of the directors of Staging Our Histories)

We normally admit eight to ten new students every year. Your chances of success are increased if you can demonstrate a strong interest in public history, show that you have had some experience (paid and / or volunteer) working in public history sites (museums, heritage houses, archives etc.) and/or creative ways of engaging with history (creating exhibits or digital sites, participating in performances or film-making etc.). While most of our students have an undergraduate degree in History, some come to us with cu_people_degree in other disciplines.

When applying be sure to connect with your referees well ahead of time so they can write you an informed letter of recommendation. Be careful in choosing your writing sample – we do read all of them – and of course take care in writing your statement of interest. The writing sample should demonstrate your ability to conduct research and communicate analytical thinking. It should therefore come from a recent, senior undergraduate-level course and while essays are the normal type of writing sample, please contact the Program Co-ordinator, James Opp, if you wish to submit an alternative example of your work. Both the writing sample and the statement of interest play very important roles in the application process as it is where we really get to know who you are and what you would like to do. Besides speaking about yourself, your interests and your background, it is important to tell us in the statement of interest what you would like to do for your major research project with some precision. For example, telling us that you want to look into issues of historical accuracy in opera, perhaps using the Canadian Opera Company’s recent Louis Riel production as an example, will help us more than telling us you’ve always loved history and music and want to work on a topic that brings the two together. Of course, you’ll not be tied down to what you propose in your statement; many topics change once students begin to take courses and get to know faculty.

If you have any questions about applying please contact the Program Co-ordinator, Professor James Opp. For technical requirements related to admissions please contact the graduate administrator, Ms. Joan White.

One of the unique features of our program is the paid internship. Students work with a public history institution or on a public history project for a full academic term (Spring-Summer, Fall, or Winter of the second year). Students normally earn around $8,000 as salary as well as course credit (HIST 5703), but wages depend on the length of the internship and the funding model used by the employer. Over the past 20 years students have found work with over forty internship partners. In many cases their experience has led to further contract work after the internship is over and even long-term employment once their MA is completed.

Internships benefit from the “Capital advantage” because many faculty across a wide range of disciplines at Carleton have deep research links in the community. These relationships bring a good deal of synergy between the university and the wider community and our negotiations for paid internships draws from the trust established through such research collaborations. This also means that our paid internships often involve higher level work than is commonly experienced by interns, work study, and practicum students. It is the responsibility of the coordinator of the program to identify and explore internship possibilities and to link internship partners with students, but connections that students themselves have are often useful starting points for such negotiations.

Our students have worked in the national museums here in Ottawa, in many local and regional museums, in Library and Archives Canada as well as local city and corporate archives, for a great number of government departments, for Parks Canada and the National Capital Commission, for private corporations and non-profit organizations, for private historical research firms and so on. They have designed and curated exhibits, produced digital projects, conducted research and written scripts for living history programs, been the first to open, identify and create finding lists for archival collections, reviewed and developed outreach programs and so on. Occasionally we have place students outside of Ottawa and the National Capital Region.