Chair

Alexander Freund

Dr. Alexander Freund is a professor in the Department of History and holds the Chair in German-Canadian Studies at the University of Winnipeg, where he also co-founded the Oral History Centre. Dr. Freund teaches courses in European/Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Modern German History, Migration and German-Canadian History, and Oral History and Memory Studies. 

Dr. Freund’s research focuses on the modern history of migrants, including German immigrants in North America and refugees in Canada, and on oral history methodology and theory. He is currently conducting research on the history of refugees in Winnipeg since 1945, the German settlement of Little Britain in Manitoba, Oral History as a Technology of the Self, Oral History and Power, and the history of immigrant fatherhood and childhood in twentieth-century Canada. He is also developing a German-Canadian archive of oral histories and personal documents.

Before coming to the University of Winnipeg in 2002, Dr. Freund was a post-doctoral fellow at the German Historical Institute/American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (The Johns Hopkins University), Washington, DC and at Columbia University’s Oral History Research Office, where he later worked as program associate (2001). Dr. Freund studied at the University of Hamburg, Simon Fraser University (M.A. 1994) and the University of Bremen (Dr. phil. 2000).

Dr. Freund has published widely in German-Canadian history, migration and ethnic history, and oral history.