Laurier professor with passion for local history to receive faculty award

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A Brantford professor with a passion for local history and uncovering the fascinating stories of ordinary people is being honoured by Wilfrid Laurier University.

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Christina Han has been named a recipient of Laurier’s 2023 Faculty Award for Service Excellence and Community Engagement.

The award recognizes full-time faculty and librarians who, “in addition to their exemplary teaching and scholarship, have made significant service contributions to the community and university.”

Han will receive her award during a June convocation ceremony. She says she is overwhelmed by the award.

“Christina goes above and beyond in her service to the institution and to the wider community,” said Janny Leung, Laurier’s dean of the faculty of liberal arts. “The curatorial, community and academic events she organizes are always thoughtful, engaging and energizing.

“Christina’s efforts in building and maintaining relationships and her exceptional gift in bringing people and communities together have hugely benefited our faculty and beyond.”

An associate professor of history at Laurier’s Brantford campus, Han is a historian and curator of East Asian culture and art, a curatorial consultant and research associate at the Royal Ontario Museum, and has work as the guest curator for the museum’s Korea Gallery.

When she came to Laurier Brantford in 2013, Han said she knew almost nothing about the city.

“I got to know a lot of local historians who told me wonderful stories,” she said. “I started looking into immigrant history and that snowballed into many projects.

“Brantford was one of the most multicultural cities in Canada in the early 20^th century, with the largest proportion of foreign-born residents in the country. But there aren’t many books written about Brantford’s history. There’s a great need to tell those stories, especially about the downtown.”

As president of the Canadian Industrial Heritage Centre, a Brantford-based organization working to promote Canada’s industrial past, Han, working with partners including Laurier, Brant Theatre Workshops and the Brant Historical Society, has helped create Memories of Brantford. It celebrates the legacies of the city’s diverse immigrant communities through musical performances, plays, lectures and exhibits. The stories of Chinese, Jewish, Italian and Chinese immigrants are featured on the website memoriesofbrantford.ca

“It’s one thing to write academic articles,” said Han. “It’s another to see families coming out to your events.”

Han was instrumental in establishing the Academic, Creative and Engaged Research Showcase at Laurier Brantford, which presents student projects to the public.

With federal research funding, Han is well into a project to analyze, compare and present the spatial histories of Brantford’s Armenian, Italian and Chinese communities between 1900 and 1920.

Believing “technology is the future of history,” she has created a “deep map,” a digital, interactive representation of the city, to bring archival data and personal narratives to life. The work will be available to the public.

“There are so many great stories,” said Han, who invites students to participate in the project. “There were Armenians who came to Brantford after surviving the Titanic.”

Han was last year appointed the inaugural director of the Laurier Hub for Community Solutions, located at Market and Darling Streets, which essentially provides a matchmaking service, connecting community partners with the insights and research skills of Laurier faculty and students.

The hub has tackled community issues as diverse as using game design to help those with opioid addiction to making more efficient a neighbourhood skating rink program operated by volunteers.

“It’s about getting expertise from different disciplines to solve a community problem,” said Han. “I genuinely love working with people and communities,” said Han. “There are so many cool people doing cool things. It’s not just about giving. I’m getting so much. They inspire me to continue the work.”