Jim Clifford

Jim Clifford

Digital & Environmental Historian | University of Saskatchewan

Research Streams

Project

👤

About

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan and Co-Editor of Historical Methods. My research sits at the intersection of environmental history and digital humanities, exploring how nineteenth-century London's rapid growth transformed environments across the British world system.

My book, West Ham and the River Lea (UBC Press, 2017), examined the local environmental and public health consequences of industrialization in East London. Since then, I've expanded this work to trace global commodity chains—following tallow from London's soap factories to grasslands around the world, and timber from railway construction sites back to the forests of the Ottawa Valley. This research explores the concept of "ghost acres": the distant lands that sustained industrial cities.

I am a member of the Historical GIS Lab, where we build spatial databases and develop digital methods for historical research. Current projects include mapping settler colonialism on the Canadian prairies, creating virtual reality experiences for public history, and documenting Saskatchewan's experience of the COVID-19 pandemic through the Remember Rebuild community archive.

I am severely dyslexic. I advocate for neurodivergent students and speak openly about my experience in my teaching, research, and service work.

📚

Publications

Mapping Commodity Histories: Historical GIS and Canadian Forest Products

With J. MacFadyen & S. Castonguay. Oxford Handbook of Commodity History, 2024

Digital History Making during a Crisis: A COVID-19 Archive

With E. Dyck & C. Harkema. Digital Memory Agents in Canada, 2024

British Ghost Acres and Environmental Changes in the Laurentian Forest

With S. Castonguay. Journal of Historical Geography, 2022

London's Soap Industry and Global Ghost Acres

Environment and History, 2021

Geoparsing History: Locating Commodities in Ten Million Pages

With B. Alex et al. Historical Methods, 2016

Trading Consequences: Text Mining and Visualization

With U. Hinrichs et al. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2015

Co-Occurrence of Depression, Anxiety and Increased Alcohol Use during COVID-19

With N. Muhajarine et al. BMJ Public Health, 2025

Capturing the Wider Health Impacts of COVID-19: Protocol

With N. Muhajarine et al. JMIR Research Protocols, 2023

Virtual Reality in History Education

With P. MacDowell et al. Journal of Applied Instructional Design, 2024

Greater London's Rapid Growth

Chapter in A Mighty Capital Under Threat, Pittsburgh, 2020

Les Hectares Fantômes de l'industrialisation Britannique

With S. Castonguay. Chapter in Écrire l'histoire Environnementale, Rennes, 2022

The River Lea in West Ham

Chapter in Urban Rivers, Pittsburgh, 2012

What is Active History?

Left History, 2010

🎓

Teaching

HIST 496: Mapping Settler Colonialism

Student digital history projects exploring settler colonialism in Saskatchewan through GIS and mapping methods.

Homesteaders Board Game

D2L Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning (2025). Educational game on settler colonialism.

Piece by Piece

A tour of clothing materials from 19th century England. By Sam Huckerby.

💰

Research Funding

Principal Investigator / Co-PI

Saskatchewan COVID-19 Community Archive

SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, 2022-2026

Archives Unleashed Subgrant

Mellon Foundation, 2022-2024

Building London With Canadian Resources

SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, 2021-2024

Prairie Landscapes and Environmental Change (CHESS)

SSHRC Connections Grant, 2018

London's Ghost Acres, 1850-1919

SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2014-2016

Trading Consequences (Digging into Data)

SSHRC / Jisc / AHRC / ESRC, 2012-2013

Co-Investigator

HGIS Lab: Infrastructure of Health, Economics, and Power

CFI Grant, 2024-2029

Genèse du système agro-alimentaire canadien

SSHRC Insight Grant, 2023-2028

Forward Linking: Building Relationships within the Cultural Data Ecosystem

SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, 2023-2025

At the Vanguard of Colonialism: Global Perspectives on Timber Colonialism

Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden), 2023

Build Back Better (COVID-19)

CIHR Grant, 2022-2024

Commerce Impérial et Transformations Environnementales

SSHRC Insight Grant, 2017-2022

The Canadian Peoples 1861-1921

CFI, 2017-2021

💻

Digital Projects

Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan

SSHRC/CIHR funded pandemic documentation through community archives and oral histories.

Historical GIS Research Canada

Census GIS polygons and tabular data for Canada, 1851-1921.

LINCS Project

10,000+ persistent identifiers for historical Canadians.

Philosophical Transactions Archive (1665-1869)

OCR of the world's first scientific journal. 8,128 articles, 106,829 pages.

Sir Joseph Banks Knowledge Graph

Network visualizations of 7,124 documents, 6,441 people.

📊

Data & Visualizations

Tableau Visualizations

Interactive historical trade and commodity visualizations.

Quebec Arrivals, 1817-1839 | Canadian Timber | British Imports

Zenodo datasets for Ghost Acres research.

London Industry Swipe Map

Interactive comparison of 1860s-1890s Ordnance Survey maps.

🌎

Videos & Exhibits

Agnes Deans Cameron VR | Wright's Timber Slide

360 VR videos on settler colonialism in Canada (2024).

Feeding Edwardian London | Ground Breakers AR

VR exhibit and augmented reality walking tour.

Walking Tours: London | Montreal

Interactive StoryMap walking tours.

Remember Lives Not Numbers

Digital memorial for Saskatchewan residents lost to COVID-19.

🔗

Links

📧

Contact

OfficeArts 706, University of Saskatchewan
Phone(306) 966-2973