Robynne Rogers Healey, PhD

Professor of History; Coordinator, Gender Studies; Co-director of the Gender Studies Institute; Sabbatical 2024/2025
My goal in teaching history is to encourage students to engage the world around them with an increased appreciation of their past. My courses move well beyond the mere memorization of names and dates and my students learn that the study of history is a dynamic and interactive process of creativity, research and thoughtful discussion.

Robynne Rogers Healey has been a faculty member at TWU since 2004. She is currently a full professor of history, chair of the History program, and the co-director of the Gender Studies Institute. She has published and presented widely in the field of Quaker history with a particular focus on Quakerism in the eighteenth-century transatlantic world, gender history, and the evolution of the peace testimony in the twentieth century. She teaches in both the undergraduate program and the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary studies program (MAIH). I use many approaches in my teaching with the objectives of guiding and supporting my students in becoming strong critical thinkers, collaborative scholars, effective communicators, and appreciative life-long learners. One of the greatest rewards of teaching history at TWU is watching students engage the discipline and challenge long-held assumptions about studying history (it is NOT boring!).

LinkedIn -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/robynne-rogers-healey/

Robynne is on Sabbatical for the Academic Year 2024/2025.

  • PhD, History (University of Alberta; 2001)
  • MA, History (University of Alberta; 1994)
  • BA, History, with great distinction (University of Alberta; 1993)

Expertise

Quaker studies, especially Quaker history, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the transatlantic world and gender-related topics in Britain, the colonial British world, and the United States. Peace studies with a focus on the evolution of the Quaker Peace Testimony through the twentieth century in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Canadian social and religious history.

Current Research and Writing Projects:

  • A small monograph on eighteenth-century Quakerism, currently titled Quaker Quietism. This book is under contract to DeGruyter-Brill Press.
  • An article tentatively titled, “More than Two Worlds: The Landscape of Nineteenth-Century Canadian Religious History” for Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society in honour of the late William Westfall.
  • An entry on “Sarah Welch Hill,” a nineteenth-century English immigrant to colonial Ontario, for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Awards & Honours

  • Hodgett Grant (Friends Historical Society, UK; 2019)
  • International Speaker Grant for Canadian Society of Church History at Congress (Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences; UBC; 2019)
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Small Institution Grant and Provost Research Grant (Trinity Western University; 2016)
  • Canadian Association for the Study of Women (CASWE) Recognition Award for the work of the Gender Studies Institute (2012)
  • Paul Harris Fellow Rotary International for exceptional service (2010)
  • Davis Distinguished Teaching Award (Trinity Western University; 2010)

Recent Publications

Selected Publications


Edited books
  • Quaker Women, 1800 – 1920: Studies of Changing Landscape (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2023), with Carole Dale Spencer.
    Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690 – 1830 (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2021).

Book Chapters:
  • “Afterword: A Postcolonial Approach to Post-Colonial Global Quakerism,” in Global Quakerism in a Post-Colonial Context, 1938–2018, eds. . Stephen W. Angell, Pink Dandelion, and David Harrington Watt (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, forthcoming).
  • “Elizabeth Robson, Transatlantic Women Ministers, and the Hicksite-Orthodox Schism,” in Quaker Women, 1800 – 1920: Studies of Changing Landscape, eds. Robynne Rogers Healey and Carole Dale Spencer (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2023), 38–56.
  • “The Crisis of World War I and the Founding of Service Organizations,” in The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830–1937 eds. Stephen W. Angell, Pink Dandelion, and David Harrington Watt (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2023), 213–31.
  • “‘Our dear Friend has departed this life’: Testimony Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century,” with Erica Canela (University of Birmingham, UK) in Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690–1830, ed. Robynne Rogers Healey (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2021), 23–43.
  • “A Complex Faith: Strategies of Marriage, Family, and Community among Upper Canadian Quakers,” with Sydney Harker (Trinity Western University) in Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690–1830, ed. Robynne Rogers Healey (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2021), 200–23.

Affiliations & Memberships

  • Member, Canadian Historical Association
  • Member, Canadian Friends Historical Association
  • Member, Canadian Society for Church History
  • Member, Friends Historical Association

  • HIST 109 Global History since 1945
  • HIST 135/136 Pre- and Post-Canadian History Survey
  • HIST 367/522 History of the Family after 1600
  • HIST 392/592 Sugar, Slaves, Silver: The Atlantic World, 1450–1850
  • HIST 403/503 Engendered History
  • HIST 435/535 Canadians at Home, Work, and Play
  • HIST 600 History, Culture, and Interpretation
  • HIST 692 “Villains” and “Wenches”: (Re)Conceiving the Atlantic World
  • HIST/POLS 406/506 War, Peace and Society
  • SOCI/GNDR 105 Introduction to Gender Studies