Faculty & Staff
Faculty
Tenured, Tenure-Track, and Limited Term
Continuing Education Coordinator
Staff
Sessional and Contract Instructors in the Department of History and The Chang School of Continuing Education
Conor Burns
Education:
BA in Liberal Studies, University of Notre Dame. MA in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto.
Areas of Expertise:
Science and Technology: North America; 19th-20th-Century Field and Earth Sciences, as well as related technologies
Conor Burns has taught a range of History of Science and Technology courses at TMU since 2009. He also has taught at the University of Toronto and York University. He served as a book review editor for Isis, the journal of the History of Science Society, from 2004 to 2012, and was on the executive council of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science from 2008 to 2020. Earlier, Conor worked in cultural resource management archaeology from 1991 to 1997 for firms based in the Pittsburgh area. He participated in numerous archaeological surveys and data-recovery projects throughout the mid-Atlantic and mid-western United States, with many projects having occurred under contract and in conjunction with the U.S. National Park Service.
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Diana Cucuz
Education:
BA in History and Political Science, McMaster University. MA in History, McMaster University. PhD in History, York University.
Areas of Expertise:
North America: Postwar/Cold War American History; Women’s History; Cultural History
Diana Cucuz specializes in American, women’s, and cultural history, and the intersections of foreign and domestic policy with politics, society, and culture. Her research focuses on the ways in which the U.S. government and media politicized women, traditional gender roles, and consumer culture during the Cold War. Her first book, Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds (University of Toronto Press, 2023), demonstrates how print culture was utilized to deploy images of supposedly happy American women as feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers living within capitalist consumer culture. Through “polite propaganda,” such as the Ladies’ Home Journal and Amerika, the U.S. government hoped to convince American and Russian women of the superiority of the American way of life, and simultaneously undermine the Soviet regime. Dr. Cucuz teaches at Toronto Metropolitan University, Brock University, and The Life Institute in diverse areas, including 20th-century American social, cultural, and urban history, as well as foreign policy.
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Evgeny Efremkin
Education:
BA in History and Political Science, York University. MA in History, York University. PhD in History, York University.
Areas of Expertise:
North America: Migration and Ethnic History; Canadian History; Cold War; Decolonization; Social and Cultural History; International Relations; Global Politics
Evgeny Efremkin is a contract lecturer in the Department of History and the Department of Politics and Public Administration at TMU. He also has taught at the University of Toronto, York University, and Trent University. Evgeny specializes in 19th- and 20th-century Canadian, Modern European, Migration and Ethnicity, and International Relations History. His research interests include ethno-national identity formation and population management in 20th-century Canada and the Soviet Union. His publications include: At the Intersection of Diasporas, Nations, and Modernities: North American Finns in the Soviet Union in the 1930s (University of British Columbia Press, forthcoming); and “Transnationalism, Celebratory Canadian Immigration History Narratives, and the Karelian Fever,” in Collection of Essays in the Memory of Gabrielle Scardelatto, (forthcoming).
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Thomas H. Greiner
Education:
BA in Classical Archaeology, University of British Columbia. MA in Egyptology, University of Liverpool. PhD in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of Toronto in progress.
Areas of Expertise:
Egyptian and Western Asian Antiquity: Cultural Contacts and Trade, Lapis-Lazuli, Egyptian State Formation; Museums and Egyptology (Material Culture, Collections History, and Outreach)
Thomas H. Greiner is completing his PhD at the University of Toronto, specializing in the cultural significance of the semi-precious stone, lapis-lazuli. He investigates how the ancient Egyptian world used lapis-lazuli, and in particular, examines its role within Egyptian state formation. A major component of his studies explores the ancient source of the stone through petrographic analyses. Currently, he is preparing a conference presentation on the earliest import of lapis-lazuli into Egypt. He also maintains a blog (www.nilescribes.org (external link) (external link) ) as a means of outreach to the general public, with the goal to make the field more inclusive and accessible.
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Mima C. Petrovic
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Jason Reid
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Joseph Tohill
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Peter Vronsky (Wronsky)
Education:
PhD History of Espionage in International Relations, University of Toronto.
Areas of Expertise:
Espionage, serial perpetrators, security-intelligence, genocide, war crimes, Cold War, Second World War
Peter Vronsky is a contract lecturer in the Department of History, and has taught courses on Nazi Germany, the American Civil War, Espionage, Terrorism, and International Relations.
Dr. Vronsky is a practising geo-forensic historian who in 2021-22 solved nine historical cold-case homicides from the 1960s and 1970s in New York and New Jersey, including the oldest cold case in US history to be closed with perpetrator DNA (as opposed to familial DNA) – the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick by serial killer Richard Cottingham in Valley Stream on Long Island.
He is the Director of the New York-New Jersey Police Department Joint Cold Case Open Data Portal (www.nynjpd.org (external link) ) and a forensic historian with the National Institute of Law and Justice (www.nilj.org (external link) ), currently investigating missing and/or murdered indigenous women on the US-Canadian border spanned by the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne.
Peter Vronsky is the author of four bestseller books on the history of serial homicide including a New York Times Critics’ Choice in 2018, Sons of Cain: The History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present.
He is considered an expert on Canada’s first modern battle, the Battle of Ridgeway, fought near Fort Erie, Ontario on June 2, 1866 against 1,200 Irish Fenian republican insurgents who raided into Canada across the Niagara River.
His professional website is www.petervronsky.org (external link)
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Christopher B. Zeichmann
Education:
BA in Theology (intensified) and Classics, Valparaiso University. MA in Biblical Studies, Claremont School of Theology. PhD in New Testament, University of Toronto.
Areas of Expertise:
Ancient Mediterranean: Early Christianity and Judaism; Greece and Rome; History of Christianity
Christopher B. Zeichmann specializes in the Graeco-Roman context of early Christianity, locating the religion within the political and social institutions of the time. His books include The Roman Army and the New Testament (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018); "The Database of Military Inscriptions and Papyri of Early Roman Palestine" (Signifer, 2022); Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum: Their History and Politics (Society of Biblical Literature, 2022). As well as teaching in History, he presents courses in Religious Studies (within the Department of Philosophy), and in Arts and Contemporary Studies.
Retired Faculty
Joey Power
Retired: 2023
Dr. Joey Power taught at Ryerson/Toronto Metropolitan University from 1990. She continues to do research in Central African History with a concentration on Malawi. She was a longstanding editor for the Canadian Journal of African Studies and continues to contribute to a range of scholarly publications in North America, Europe, and Africa. Dr. Power is available to sponsor post-docs at TMU, and continues to do joint graduate supervision.
Ron Stagg
Retired: 2024
Dr. Ron Stagg joined Ryerson/Toronto Metropolitan University when it was known as Ryerson Polytechnic Institute and, over the years, saw many changes in the institution. In retirement he continues to publish both academic and non-academic books and papers. Currently, he is working on a book on the 1837 Rebellion in Upper Canada (Ontario), and writing on the misuse of history. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, discussing mass protests, the distortion of history in order to justify actions in the present, and the fate of statues commemorating historical figures.