Neil Forkey, Ph.D.

Dr. Neil S. Forkey is Associate Professor and Chair of the Canadian Studies Department.  He is also the current Archie F. MacAllaster and Barbara Torrey MacAllaster Professor of North Country Studies.  Forkey received his Ph.D. in Canadian history from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. He offers courses on Canadian-American Relations and Québec and teaches survey Canadian history and global environmental history.  For over twenty years, he participated in the First-Year Program. Forkey has also served as the Coordinator of the Native American Studies Program.

A specialist in environmental history, he is the author of Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century (University of Toronto Press, 2012); and Shaping the Upper Canadian Frontier:  Environment, Society, and Culture in the Trent Valley (University of Calgary Press, 2003).  Forkey’s articles have appeared in such scholarly journals as the Canadian Historical Review, the Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes, the American Review of Canadian Studies, Forest and Conservation History, Ontario History, and New York History.  His forthcoming book, Defending a Borderland: Canadian and American Environmental Activism in the St. Lawrence Valley, will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press as part of its Environmental History of the Northeast series.

Forkey was an elected member of the university’s Faculty Council, and Academic Planning Committee. He also served on the University Advancement and University Communications Committee, the Center for the Environment Task Force Group, the Advisory Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid, and was the interim faculty advisor to the university’s The Underground: Journal for Undergraduate Research. 

Between 2022 and 2025, Forkey served as president of the Middle Atlantic and New England Council of Canadian Studies (MANECCS).  In addition, he has sat on several committees of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS).