Stephen Heathorn
Associate Dean, Faculty of Humanities

Stephen Heathorn is a cultural historian, particularly interested in the way the past has been represented and used by individuals and societies in the past. His main focus has been on Britain and its imperial reach since the 18th Century. His PhD dissertation (completed at the University of Toronto in 1996) focused on how late-19th Century working-class English school children learned about their national heritage and developed a sense of English identity. This was the basis of his book, For Home, Country and Race, published in 2000. Heathorn's first fulltime faculty position was at Indiana University in Indianapolis: he joined the McMaster Department of History in 2001.

Subsequently, he explored the politics of commemoration and memorialization in Britain and its imperial possessions in the 20th Century in a string of journal articles and in his book Haig and Kitchener in Twentieth Century Britain published in 2013. His interest in how the past was adapted and used for new purposes in places influenced by British ideas and culture led to his organizing a conference on the translation of civil liberties to human rights and an edited collection, Taking Liberties: A History of Human Rights in Canada (with Dave Goutor), also in 2013. He is currently working on a number of research projects: on the coding of time and modernity in the London cityscape in the first half of the 20th Century; on the commemoration of the 1940 Battle of Britain; and on various aspects of the social ideas of the philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Heathorn has brought his interest in how the past has been used into his teaching and with four colloborators, wrote and published a new text book for university students on British history that combines not only the impact of Britain on the world, but also the impact of the world on Britain, and focuses on the way the past has always impinged on the present and future. The book, Britain since 1688: A Nation in the World was published in 2014, and a second revised edition, was published in 2023.

Administratively, Heathorn served for more than six years as the Department's Graduate Chair, five years (2018-2023) as the Department's Chair, and most recently (2024) as Acting Associate Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.

Heathorn is the reciepent of the Trustees of Indiana University Teaching Award and was elected a Fellow of The Royal Historical Society in 2013.