Biography

Dianne Newell is an historian of technology who has spent her career examining the diffusion of knowledge in disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. She has held numerous leadership positions internationally and at the University of British Columbia, including president and journal editor of the Smithsonian-based Society for Industrial Archeology, founding member of the International Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University of Munich (2006- ), and Associate Dean in the UBC Faculty of Graduate Studies (1996-1998).

Newell was named interim Director of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC in 2003 and appointed Director in 2006. In this role she has led the Institute's strategic direction, which has focused on creating scholarly partnerships among the international network of advanced studies institutes to create research with lasting value and impact. During her tenure, in addition to her advisory role in the Institute of Advanced Study in Munich, she has created formal collaborative relationships for scholar exchanges and workshops with leading research centres in Paris (Collège de France) and South Africa (Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study). She has also helped to shape the Peter Wall Institute by maintaining its core focus on enhancing research at UBC through the creation of collaborative interdisciplinary programs for scholars at all stages of their career. Under her leadership the Institute has expanded its facilities, programs, and information technology to heighten its reputation as an inspiring location for high-risk research and discussions at the highest level involving outstanding scholars at UBC and abroad. A downtown public lecture series that will feature major speakers and spread innovative research ideas to the attention of the broader community is underway.

Newell has written five books. Of the earliest of these, Tangled Webs of History: Mining in Old Ontario (University of British Columbia Press,1986) provides new perspectives on the persistence of old techniques in the face of rapid development; The Development of the Pacific Salmon-Canning Industry (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989) advances knowledge of early modern business; and Survivals: Aspects of Industrial Archeology in Ontario (Boston Mills Press, 1989), with Ralph Greenhill, represents the country's first scholarly monograph on the field. Newell's Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries (University of Toronto Press, 1993; 1997) explores fishing rights, one of the major areas of dispute for aboriginals in Canada today. It received scholarly book prizes from the Canadian Historical Association, the Association of Canadian Studies, and the Canadian Nautical Research Society. A second study of fisheries, with Rosemary Ommer, Fishing Places, Fishing People: Traditions and Issues in Canadian Small-Scale Fisheries (University of Toronto Press, 1999), is a unique interdisciplinary collection of original research on Canada's fresh- water and marine fisheries history and contemporary debates. She has more than 70 articles in key academic journals including World Archaeology, Journal of Historical Geography, Business History Review, Technology & Culture, Biography, and Science Fiction Studies, and chapters in books that range in topic from business history to science fiction, such as Finance, Intermediaries, and Economic Development (Cambridge University Press (UK), 2003), Gender and Knowledge (Chronos Verlag, Zurich, 2004), Contact Zones: Aboriginal & Settler Women in Canada's Colonial Past (UBC Press, 2005), Emotion, Place and Culture (Ashgate Press (UK), 2009), and On Joanna Russ (Wesleyan University Press, 2009).

She is a leading expert in Canadian Native case law in the area of fisheries, has served on the Research Management Committee of AquaNet: Canada's Network of Centres of Excellence in Aquaculture, and provided the major entry on international fisheries and fish processing for the first international encyclopedia of economic history (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Newell has taught many students at the University of British Columbia. She has also supervised and been responsible for more than 700 Ph.D. oral examinations and all graduate student awards at the university during her time in the Faculty of Graduate Studies. She is a graduate of Carleton University (Canadian Studies MA, 1974) and the University of Western Ontario (History PhD, 1981) and joined the University of British Columbia in 1980.