Peter Seixas

University of British Columbia
Director, The Historical Thinking Project

Peter Seixas was Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia, where he was also the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness. He taught high school social studies in Vancouver for 15 years and earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of California at Los Angeles.  He is interested in the understandings, representations and uses of the past in the contrasting settings of schools, academia and popular culture.  He has written numerous articles on historical thinking, history curriculum and history teaching, and spoken on these topics across Canada and the United States, as well as in the UK, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.  He is the editor of Theorizing Historical Consciousness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), and co-editor, with Peter Stearns and Sam Wineburg, of Knowing, Teaching and Learning History: National and International Perspectives (New York: NYU Press, 2000). Most recently, he is the author, with Tom Morton, of The Big Six Historical Thinking Concepts (Toronto: Nelson, 2012), designed to help teachers incorporate historical thinking into their classes.  His contributions to research, teaching and service, have been recognized with the Exemplary Research Award of the National Council of Social Studies (US), the Constance Rourke Award of the American Studies Association, the William Gilbert Award of the American Historical Association, the Innovation Award of the BC Social Studies Teachers’ Association, the National Leadership Award of the Ontario History and Social Science Teachers’ Association, membership in the Royal Society of Canada, the Killam Faculty Teaching Prize at the University of British Columbia and (last but not least) the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for Service to Canada. He retired from UBC in June 2016 and became Professor Emeritus.