“Best Book in Regional History (Prairies),” Canadian Historical Association, 2021. Available at UTP, Tergesen’s, Indigo, and other major booksellers. “Bertram has made a groundbreaking and unique contribution to the study of this ethnic community’s history, focusing her study on the broad categories of clothing, beverages, the supernatural, Viking symbolism, and baking. The reader who opens…
Historians + AI: University Affairs Interview
The debate around historians and AI is not as simple as “should we or shouldn’t we use it?” Sitting down with Sparrow McGovern in this February 2026 featured article for University Affairs. “As AI becomes more pervasive, deciding when to use it — or not use it — becomes more complicated. L.K. Bertram, a…
New Journal of Social History Article: “The Other Little House: The Brothel as a Colonial Institution in the Canadian North West.”
Ranked one of the most read articles of 2022 by Oxford University Press Free access to the article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shac018 © L.K. Bertram, 2022. What role did settler bawdy houses play in Canadian colonial expansion in the 1880s? The trial of “Big Nelly” Webb, a white bawdy house madam and sex worker who shot a…
Social For Scholars Bootcamp
Could your research be reaching way more people? How can good research-driven institutions outpace online slop? The public is actually desperate for access to engaging, high-quality information and our social media bootcamp helps teach academics, scientists, and other researchers learn how to reach and engage with big social media audiences in safer, more sustainable ways….
Publications
Books The Viking Immigrants: Icelandic North Americans. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020 Articles “Icelandic Cake Fight: History of an Immigrant Recipe.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies 19, no. 4 (2019): 28-41. “‘Eskimo’ Immigrants and Colonial Soldiers: Icelandic Immigrants and the North-West Resistance, 1885.” Canadian Historical Review 99, no. 1 (2018): 63-97. (Winner of the 2019…
History of Canadian Sex Work Legislation
Sex work legislation is an important human rights issue that concerns all Canadians. Long before the Canadian government’s passage of Bill C-36 in 2014, many other laws have tried to stop “the world’s oldest profession” in Canada. More than simply trying to end prostitution, these historical laws legalized discrimination against a range of communities based…
About
Biography Dr. L.K. Bertram is an award-winning author and Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, specializing in economic and material histories of, gender, sexuality, and colonialism in the 19th century North American West, including a book currently in progress on sex workers as early firearms owners in…
L.K. BERTRAM 