FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

Wilson Institute for Canadian History

Mikhail Bjorge

Mikhail Bjorge is an assistant professor of History at Dalhousie University. Before arriving at Dalhousie, he taught history and political science at the University of Toronto and George Brown College. Holding a PhD from Queen’s University, he is primarily interested in the transnational nature of capitalism, work, and law, and writes broadly on political economy, labour, and enclosure.

 

Mikhail’s forthcoming book with the University of Toronto Press, The Workers War: Economic Democracy in Canada’s Industrial Homefront, 1939-1945, explores industrial unrest during the Second World War. With a particular focus on women, racialized minorities, and indigenous peoples, the study traces the diversity of shop floor militancy and working-class opposition to capitalism before the rise of the bureaucratic labour relations regime we know today.

 

Interested broadly in the global history of political economy, Dr. Bjorge’s ongoing research projects include Canadian macroeconomics, the matrixes of enclosure and colonialism, and labour unrest.

Publications

“No Model Minority: Tear Gas, Bayonets, Strikes, Resistance, Riot, and Struggle in Japanese Internment Camps.” In Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories and Legacies, Rhonda L. Hinther and Jim Mochoruk, eds., Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2020.

 

“Anti-Foreign Strikes and the Patriotic Shield: Direct Action, Canadian Workers, and the Struggle Against the Employment of “Enemy Aliens” in WWII.” In Fighting with the Empire: Canada, Britain, and Global Conflict, 1867-1947, Steven Marti and William Pratt, eds., Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2019.

 

“‘They Shall Not Die!’ Anarchists, Syndicalists, Communists, and the Sacco and Vanzetti Solidarity Campaign in Canada,” Labour/Le Travail 75 (Spring 2015): 43–73.