Alix Shield

Education

• PhD, English, Simon Fraser University
• MA, English, Dalhousie University
• BA (Hons), English, Acadia University 

Biography

I defended my PhD in English at SFU in Spring 2020, and prior to that completed a Master of Arts (English) at Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS), and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours (English) at Acadia University (Wolfville, NS). My PhD dissertation is called Kwaskastahsowin (“Put things to right”): Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Indigenous Women’s Writing, Editing, and Publishing in Canada. 

I have worked as a Research Assistant for the past 4 years with Deanna Reder's SSHRC-funded project, The People and the Text, building a digital database of Indigenous authors in Northern North America. My work in this role has included archival research, digitization, Drupal website development, and digital humanities skills training. I have also attended the annual Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria since 2013, taking courses on topics including "Cultural Codes and Protocols for Indigenous Digital Heritage Management," "Conceptualizing and Creating a Digital Edition," and "Digital Indigeneity" among others -- and in 2018, I co-taught the "Drupal for Digital Humanities Projects" course. In 2016-17, I assisted with the development of digital resources for the Virtual Museum of Canada's “Sq’éwlets: A Stó:lō-Coast Salish Community in the Fraser River Valley” project. 

My research uses contemporary digital humanities methods to analyze collaboratively-authored twentieth- and twenty-first century Indigenous literatures in Canada, and is primarily focused on E. Pauline Johnson’s and Chief Joe and Mary Capilano’s Legends of Vancouver (1911) and Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973).