2024 Historian in Residence

Heritage Calgary and Calgary Public Library invite applications for the paid position of Historian in Residence at Central Library in downtown Calgary, Alberta for 2024. 

The Historian in Residence program is a six-month community engagement residency that supports historians and researchers working in any genre related to Calgary's (Moh'kins'tsis’) social, cultural, and built history.

The resident is invited to work remotely, and/or in a designated office space on the 4th floor of Central Library. They will engage with the public through programs such as open office hours, interactive/online workshops, school group tours and lectures. They are encouraged to use the Library’s collection and Heritage Calgary’s Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources during the residency and are invited to curate an exhibit, performance or final program at the close of their residency.

Former Historians

Kay Burns

Kay Burns was the 2023 Historian in Residence. She is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher driven by perpetual curiosity. She is passionate about questioning the acquisition of knowledge and what unexpected connections are revealed through that process. Her work considers the authority of information, specifically in relation to archival and museum practices. As the Historian in Residence, she will explore Calgary Public Library’s map collection and records of surveyors, asking questions about the perception of place, about Calgary’s growth as a city, and the annexation of surrounding land.

Shelly McElroy

Shelly McElroy was the 2022 Historian in Residence. She is curator of Pioneer Acres Museum in Irricana, Alberta. Pioneer Acres Museum is one of the largest agricultural and industrial history museums in Alberta with a collection of thousands of artifacts. Shelly has a background in education, agriculture, counselling, and museums. Shelly explores how agriculture shaped life in Calgary and area in the early twentieth century (and how it still does).

The Historian in Residence program is a six-month community engagement residency that supports historians and researchers working in any genre related to Calgary's (Moh'kins'tsis’) social, cultural and built history. The Historian in Residence program is presented in partnership with Calgary Public Library.

C.W. Gross

C.W. (Cory) Gross is a professional educator with over 20 years of experience in museums and heritage. His primary field is the geology of Western Canada and its intersection with Indigenous, settler, and immigrant histories. In early 2020 he published his first book, The Ice Age in Western Canada. Whereas the typical work of the historian is the social, cultural, and built histories of a community, a “Prehistorian-in-Residence” studies the underlying landscape, geology, climate, resources, fossils, flora and fauna that formed the literal groundwork for these histories.

Shaun Hunter

Shaun explores what literature says about Calgary. She is the author of Calgary through the Eyes of Writers, co-curated “Storied City: Early Calgary through the Eyes of Writers” at Lougheed House, and helped connect the city to Project Bookmark’s national trail. Shaun shares her passion for Calgary’s literary landscape at shaunhunter.ca.

During her term as Historian in Residence, Shaun researched and built an annotated digital map of Calgary’s literary touchstones. The map features sites from the Inventory of Evaluated Historic Resources.  

Jessie Ray Short

Jessie Ray Short is an artist, filmmaker and independent curator whose cross disciplinary practice involves memory, visual culture and Métis history. In the past 10 years she has exhibited work nationally and internationally. She has been the recipient of several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. As a curator she has had the opportunity to work on various projects most notably Jade Carpenter: Mourn at City of Calgary Open Spaces Gallery and Mixed Berries: Amanda Strong and Bracken Hanuse Corlett at Gallery 2, Grand Forks, BC. During her term as Historian in Residence, Jessie produced a documentary exploring the links between Métis history and her family.

Kevin Allen

Kevin Allen is the founder of the Calgary Gay History Project, an ongoing initiative to document the lived history of Calgary’s LGBTQ2+ community. He was the first Historian in Residence at Calgary’s Central Public Library and he is the author of Our Past Matters: Stories of Gay Calgary. He is a fourth-generation Calgarian.

Kevin has been documenting and profiling queer people and events for 30 years through freelance writing and editing for various queer publications. He is a career arts administrator and the past Executive Director of the Alberta Media Arts Alliance (AMAAS). He has previously worked for the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF), NUTV, and Arts Commons.