Ruth W. Sandwell is a professor at the University of Toronto and, in 2019, a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center. She is the author of a number of articles exploring the history of energy and everyday life in Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She was guest editor with Abigail Harrison Moore of a special issue of The History of Retailing and Consumption, Off-Grid Empire: Rural Energy Consumption in Britain and the British Empire, 1850–1960 (2018). She edited Powering Up Canada: A History of Fuel, Power, and Energy from 1600 (McGill-Queen’s University Press), and published Canada’s Rural Majority, 1870–1940: Households, Environments, Economies (University of Toronto Press), both in 2016.
RCC Research Project: Heat, Light and Work in Canadian Homes: A Social History of Energy, 1850–1950
Selected Publications:
- “The Coal Oil Lamp.” In “Artifacts in Agraria.” Special issue, Agricultural History 92, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 190–209. (“Article of the Year Award” for 2018 from the Petroleum History Society)
- “Heating and Cooking in Rural Canada 1800–1950: A Hybrid Energy Transition.” In “Off-Grid Empire: Rural Energy Consumption in Britain and the British Empire, 1850–1960,” edited by Abigail Harrison Moore and Ruth W. Sandwell. Special issue, The History of Retailing and Consumption 4, no. 1 (2018): 64–80.
- “People, Place and Power: Rural Electrification in Canada, 1890–1950.” In Transforming the Countryside: the Electrification of Rural Britain, edited by Paul Brassley, Jeremy Burchardt, and Karen Sayer, 178–204. London: Routledge, 2017.
- ed. Powering Up Canada: A History of Fuel, Power and Energy from 1600. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2016. (Winner of The Canadian Studies Network—Réseau d'études canadiennes, 2017 Prize for Best Edited Collection)
- Canada’s Rural Majority, 1870–1940: Households, Environments, Economies. Themes in Canadian History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016.
- “The Emergence of Modern Lighting in Canada: A Preliminary Reconnaissance.” The Extractive Industries and Society: An International Journal 3, no. 3 (2016): 850–63.