UPEI instructor wins SSHRC Exchange Publication Award
Dr. Callum Beck, a sessional instructor in religious studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, has been awarded a $7,000 SSHRC Exchange Publication Award for his monograph, The Belfast Riot of 1847.
The SSHRC Exchange Publication Award is given out annually to support the publication of a manuscript written or edited by UPEI faculty in the social sciences and humanities. The monograph will be published by Island Studies Press.
On March 1, 1847, the Island experienced the second-worst election riot in Canadian history. About 200 Scottish Protestants and 300 Irish Catholics got into a brawl, resulting in at least three men dead and up to 100 others injured. This event set the stage for the hardening of the sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics on Prince Edward Island for the next 125 years.
Beck’s nuanced and detailed account of this event considers all the relevant angles: religion, ethnicity, chronic election violence, the Land Question, the particular leasehold landscape of the Belfast region in the 1840s, the specific 1847 situation in terms of a critical by-election, and the political stakes as the Island colony groped towards self-government.
Born and raised in Charlottetown, PEI, Beck completed a BA in Philosophy at UPEI, a Master of Arts in Religion at Emmanuel School of Religion in Tennessee, and a PhD at Open University in the UK. He has served as a pastor and as a sessional instructor at UPEI. He and his wife Lorraine have three children and six grandchildren.
Island Studies Press congratulates Beck and thanks Dr. Marva Sweeney-Nixon, associate vice-president research and dean of graduate studies at UPEI, for supporting faculty publications.
For more information, please contact Bren Simmers at ispstaff@upei.ca or call (902) 566-0386.
