Isabel Campbell is an historian at the Directorate of History and Heritage, National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa. She was educated at Memorial, Western, Carleton, and Laval universities. The author of Unlikely Diplomats. The Canadian Brigade in Germany, 1951-1964, she is a co-author on volumes three and four of the official histories of the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force respectively. She is currently writing about the contributions of Inuit guides in Canada’s north, early Cold War allied intelligence relating to Canada’s defence planning, and Canadian nuclear policies.
Campbell is also editing a volume on the Canadian Cold War security state and labour with contributions from recent doctoral students in history, human studies, and anthropology from Carleton, Laurentian, Wilfred Laurier, the University of Alaska, and the University of Saskatchewan. This volume includes a piece about a residential school survivor who became a Cold War military soldier written from the perspective of his son. She is passionate about innovations in access and archives and an advocate for the whole life oral history methodology which she is utilizing to study Canadian Cold War military families. Current projects involve the analysis of gender roles, the development of “fictive” kinships among military families, and perceptions about cultural, racial, and linguistic “othering” among military families.
She welcomes collaborations, including requests for co-supervision of graduate students, and is looking forward to working closely with Carleton historians, students, and others.