My research focuses on migration, health, education, and religion. At UBC, I teach courses on global history, migration, imperialism, and anticolonialism. I am also chair of the Latin American Studies program (2022-2025). Beyond UBC, I am the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (2022-2025), the curator the Bridge to Argentina virtual museum, and a fellow at the Lateinamerika-Institut at the Freie Universität in Berlin, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2023-26).

I am currently completing a book titled Grounds for Exclusion: Race, Health, and Disability in Argentina, 1876-1932. It highlights the many ways that bureaucrats, politicians, and nationalist agitators in Argentina developed both formal and informal methods to exclude a range of groups based in race, gender, health, and ability. Early parts of this research have appeared in the Hispanic American Historical Review and Journal of Migration History.

My first monograph, To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society (Stanford University Press, 2018) and its translation, Ser de Buenos Aires: Alemanes, argentinos y el surgimiento de una sociedad plural, 1880-1930 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2019), chronicle the activities and fantasies of the people who sought to create a lasting German community in the Argentine capital and the behaviour of others who undermined their project. Across ethnic groups, gender and class hierarchies shaped community institutions. The typically male-led organizations fostered structures that created paternalistic relationships between wealthy and working-class immigrants and patriarchal hierarchies between men and women. Focusing on childhood, education, and social welfare, the book argues that ideas about the future drove thousands of German-speaking immigrants to carve out a place for ethnicity and pluralism in the cultural, religious, and linguistic landscape of Buenos Aires. It provides a timely reminder of how national identities in the Americas were built on cultural pluralism and multilingualism.

My most recent monograph, The Boundaries of Ethnicity: German Immigration and the Language of Belonging in Ontario (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022) argues that children, parents, teachers, and religious communities shaped the nature of cultural pluralism in Ontario society. Taking German speakers as an illustrative case study, it demonstrates how people drew and re-drew the boundaries around groups defined by language, heritage, or denomination. In so doing, they created overlapping and contradictory visions of ethnic difference and civic belonging in Canadian society. This book uncovers some of the origins of Canadian multiculturalism and government attempts to manage that diversity.

You can find my CV here and my website here.

Migration
Race and ethnicity
Health
Education
Transnational history
Argentina
Canada
The Americas

Monographs

The Boundaries of Ethnicity: German Immigration and the Language of Belonging in Ontario. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.

To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018.

Ser de Buenos Aires: Alemanes, argentinos y el surgimiento de una sociedad plural, 1880-1930. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2019 (Spanish translation).

Edited Books

Benjamin Bryce and David M.K. Sheinin, eds. Recasting the Nation in Twentieth Century Argentina. New York: Routledge, 2022.

Benjamin Bryce and David M.K. Sheinin, eds. Race and Transnationalism in the Americas. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.

Benjamin Bryce and David M.K. Sheinin, eds. Making Citizens in Argentina. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017.

Benjamin Bryce and Alexander Freund, eds. Entangling Migration History: Borderlands and Transnationalism in the United States and Canada. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015.

Refereed Journal Articles

“Japanese Exclusion and Environmental Conservation in the British Columbia Salmon Fisheries, 1900-1930.” Western Historical Quarterly 53, no. 3 (2022): 267-292.

“Seeing Japan: A Canadian Missionary’s Photography and Transpacific Audiences, 1888-1925.” Pacific Historical Review 91, no. 2 (2022): 190-219.

“Undesirable Britons: South Asian Migration and the Making of a White Argentina.” Hispanic American Historical Review 99, no. 2 (2019): 247-273.

“Citizens of Empire: Education and Teacher Exchanges in Canada and the Commonwealth, 1910-1940.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45, no. 4 (2017): 607-629.

“Paternal Communities: Social Welfare and Immigration in Argentina, 1880-1930.” Journal of Social History 49, no. 1 (2015): 213-236.

“Linguistic Ideology and State Power: German and English Education in Ontario, 1880-1912.” Canadian Historical Review 94, no. 2 (2013): 207-233.

“Entangled Communities: Religion and Ethnicity in Ontario and North America, 1880-1930.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 23, no. 1 (2012): 189-226.

“Los caballeros de beneficencia y las damas organizadoras: El Hospital Alemán y la idea de comunidad en Buenos Aires, 1880-1930.” Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 70 (2011): 79-107.

Book Chapters

“Cultural Pluralism Written in Stone: Ethnic Monuments in the 1910 Argentine Centennial.” In Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina, edited by Benjamin Bryce and David M.K. Sheinin, 18-44. New York: Routledge, 2022.

Co-author. “Introduction: Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina.” In Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina, edited by Benjamin Bryce and David M.K. Sheinin, 1-17. New York: Routledge, 2022.

“Asian Migration, Racial Hierarchies, and Exclusion in Argentina, 1890-1920.” In Race and Transnationalism in the Americas, edited by Benjamin Bryce and David M.K. Sheinin, 20-36. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.

“Transatlantic Religion: German Lutheran Missionaries in Canada and Argentina, 1880-1930.” In Atlantic Crossroads: Webs of Migration, Culture and Politics between Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1800–2020, edited by José C. Moya, 152-174. New York: Routledge, 2021.

Co-author. “Overcoming the National.” In Race and Transnationalism in the Americas, edited by Benjamin Bryce and David M.K. Sheinin, 330-336. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021 (forthcoming).

Co-author. “Introduction: Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Argentina.” In Making Citizens in Argentina, edited by Benjamin Bryce and David M.K. Sheinin, 1-17. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017.

Co-author. “Introduction.” In Entangling Migration History: Borderlands and Transnationalism in the United States and Canada, edited by Benjamin Bryce and Alexander Freund, 1-13. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015.

“La etnicidad en el Argentinisches Tageblatt, 1905-1918: la discusión de una comunidad germánica y alemana.” In Anuario Argentino de Germanística IV, edited by Regula Rohland and Miguel Vedda, 125-143. Buenos Aires: Asociación Argentina de Germanistas, 2008.

Awards

2018, University Excellence in Research Award, University of Northern British Columbia

2014, German-Canadian Studies Doctoral Dissertation Prize

Honours

2017-23, Associate, L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History, McMaster University

Major Research Grants

2021-26           Insight Grant (principal investigator), “Grounds for Exclusion: Immigration, Race, Health, and Gender in Argentina, 1876-1940,” $88,369, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

2021-23           Insight Development Grant (principal investigator), “Settler Vines: Migrants, Science, and Environment in Canada and Argentina, 1890-1940,” $56,875, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

2020-22, SSHRC Connection Grant (co-applicant), “Settler Vines: Making and Consuming Wine in a Globalizing World since 1850,” $17,777

2016-22, SSHRC Insight Grant (principal investigator), “Healing the Nation: Healthcare, Philanthropy, and Ethnicity in Argentina, 1880-1945,” $61,666

2013-2014, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, “Exchanging Empire: Canada, Britishness, and the Rise of the Commonwealth, 1919-1939,” $50,000

2012-2014, SSHRC Connection Grant (co-applicant), “Borderlands and Transnationalism: New Perspectives on Immigration to Canada and the United States,” $38,500

2011, DAAD Research Grant, “Making Ethnic Space:  Education, Religion, and the German Language in Argentina and Canada, 1880-1930,” €4,000

Teaching Grants

2022, “Public History and Community Engagement at the Roedde House Museum,” Advancing Community Engaged Learning Grant, Centre for Community Engaged Learning, UBC

2021, “Settler Vines: Migrants, Science, and Environment in the BC Wine Industry, 1900-1950,” $2,500, Arts Undergraduate Research Awards, University British Columbia

2020, “Community Engagement at the Roedde House Museum,” $2,500, Public History Initiative, Department of History, University British Columbia

2019, “Student Research and Community Engagement at the North Pacific Cannery,” Research Strategic Initiatives Grant, Office of Research, University of Northern British Columbia, $5,866

2017, University Experiential and Service Learning Award, Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, University of Northern British Columbia, $5,254

Bryce is the coordinator and curator of Bridge to Argentina, a trilingual virtual museum in collaboration with the Museo de la Inmigración in Buenos Aires. It presents scholarly research to the general public through interactive exhibits, digital media, and diverse stories. This project has been supported by a fellowship at the UBC Public Humanities Hub (2022-23).

Bryce has been involved in a public history project at the North Pacific Cannery National Historic Site in Prince Rupert, BC where he taught experiential learning courses in 2017 and 2019. Student researchers from the University of Northern British Columbia have shared their findings here. In September 2019 students from the course appeared on CBC radio and were featured in The Northern View. Bryce has published an essay about teaching experiential learning seminars here. More recently, he has taught a similar experiential learning course at the Roedde House Museum in Vancouver. Students shared a range of research projects here.

Here are some other online publications that stem from research and teaching.

“Subjectivity and Objectivity: Photography, Family, and the Historian,” ActiveHistory.ca, September 26, 2019.

“J. Cooper Robinson: A Canadian Missionary and Photographer in Japan, 1888-1925,” The Meiji at 150 Digital Teaching Resource, University of British Columbia, July 2018.

“Immigration, Communities, and Neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, 1880–1930,” Global Urban History, January 17, 2018.

Co-authored with Anna Casas Aguilar, “Religion and Auteurism in The Revenant,” ActiveHistory.ca, September 16, 2016.

Co-authored with Ryan McKenney, “Creating the Canadian Mosaic,” ActiveHistory.ca, May 16, 2016.