Stephan Pigeon
I am an Assistant Professor (on a limited term appointment) in the History Department at St. Francis Xavier University.
I studied at the University of Windsor before completing a PhD at McGill University in 2021 under the auspices of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral (CGS-D) program, administered by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). During my doctoral studies, I held fellowships from the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, the Willison Foundation Charitable Trust, Canada Science and Technology Museum, and the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. My dissertation received honourable mentions from the American Journalism Historians’ Association and the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals.
Prior to my appointment at St. Francis Xavier University in 2023, I was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University where I taught modern European history.
Teaching
For the 2025-2026 academic calendar, I will teach the following courses: HIST-213 Life and Times: Pre-Confederation Canada; HIST-215 A History of Canada: Post-Confederation; HIST-297 ST: The Power of the Press in Nineteenth Century Britain; HIST-344 Uses and Abuses of History; HIST-399 ST: The Historical Imagination; HIST-497 ST: Global History
I have also taught the following courses at StFX: HIST-297 ST: Historical Methods and Practices; HIST-319 Myth and Memory; HIST-397 ST: Social Media Past and Present; HIST-397 ST: History Workshop; HIST-497 ST: Empire, Archives, and Destruction; HIST-497 ST: History Under Review
Research Interests
Global History; Modern Britain and Empire; History of the Book; 19th-century Newspaper and Periodical Press; History of Reading; Historical Methods and Practices
BOOK PROJECT:
Journalism from Below: Sub-Editors and the British Press System. The manuscript is under an advance contract with the University of Toronto Press for their Studies in Book History and Print Culture series.
REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS:
“Scissors and Paste: A New Terminology.” In Fionnuala Dillane and Marianne Van Remoortel (eds.), Handbook of Transnational Periodical Research. Brill Publishers. Forthcoming 2026.
“Trade Custom and the Courtesy of Acknowledgement: The Practice of Copying in the late-Victorian Confectionery Trade Press.” In Andrew King (ed.), Work and the Nineteenth-Century Press: Living Work for Living People, 145-168. Routledge, 2022.
“Arthur Griffith and his Censors: Circumventing Censorship in the Irish Newspaper Press, 1914-15.” Publishing History 80 (2019): 35-66.
“Steal it, Change it, Print it: Transatlantic ‘Scissors-and-Paste’ Journalism in the Ladies’ Treasury, 1857-1895.” Journal of Victorian Culture 22, no. 1 (March 2017): 24-39.
RECENT CONFERENCES:
“Precarity, Remuneration, and Quality of Life for a Working London Journalist, 1875-1901,” North American Conference on British Studies, Montreal, Canada, November 14-16, 2025. (Confirmed)
“The Journalism and Privations of Astley Henry Baldwin,” Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, USA, July 7-11, 2025.
“‘To clear the black sheep out of journalism’: Making the Institute of Journalists, 1884-1902” Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Digital Salon, Virtual Seminar, February 28, 2025.
“A New Terminology for Textual Circulation,” Research Seminar Sponsored by the European Society for Periodicals Research, Virtual Seminar, October 2, 2023.
“The National Association of Journalists and Competing Visions for Professional Status in Britain,” Canadian Historical Association, York University, Toronto, Canada, May 29-31, 2023.
“Imperial News Lines: Transmitting Commercial Intelligence into the British Press,” Britain and the World Conference, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA, April 20-22, 2023.
“Journalism from Below: Sub-Editors in the British Press System,” Larry D. Stokes Seminar, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, March 10, 2023.
