My research focuses on the history of children/childhood and youth in Canada, late 19th to 21st centuries. My current project, Ring Around the Maple: A Sociocultural History of Canadian Children, co-authored with Neil Sutherland, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, is an overview about ‘growing up Canadian’ during this period that maps changes and continuities in the everyday lives and fluid culture of children. I am also participating in a collaborative Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded project with Mark Humphries, director, Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, and Terry Copp, former director of the LCMSDS, on veterans’ social reintegration after the Great War. 

• Best Book in the History of Education, Canadian History of Education Association Founders’ Prize, 2008, for The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of Modern Canada (WLUP: 2006).
• Honorary Mention, Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for the Best Book in Canadian History, Canadian Historical Association, 2008, for The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of Modern Canada (WLUP: 2006).
• University Teaching Award, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2002.
• Faculty of Arts Teaching Scholar Award, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2002.

I am willing to supervise graduate students, MA and PhD, as well as postdoctoral students in the areas of family, childhood and youth, gender, social policy and the sociocultural aspects of war in Canadian history. 

• The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of a Modern Canada, 1920-50. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006.
• The Infinite Bonds of Family: Domesticity in Canada, 1850-1940. University of Toronto Press, 1999.
• "Nations are Built of Babies": Saving Ontario's Mothers and Children, 1900-1940. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993.
• “‘Young Canada’: Youth and Nation-Building, 1867-1900,”, in Christine Feldman Barrett, ed. Lost Histories of Youth Culture. London: Peter Lang, 2015.
• “Challenging Strathcona: The Cadet Training Controversy in English Canada, 1920-1950,” in Lara Campbell, Michael Dawson, Catherine Gidney, eds. War Resistance in Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2015.
• “Families in Canada: An Historical Overview,” in Patrizia Albanese, ed. Canadian Families: Sociological Perspectives. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2013.
• “‘To Hold On High the Torch of Liberty’: Canadian Youth in the Second World War,” in Geoffrey Hayes, Michael Bechtold, Matt Symes eds. Canada and the Second World War: Essays in Honour of Terry Copp. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012.