Fonds MS-2-27 - James H. Morrison fonds

James Morrison is an oral historian and researcher with interests in global, Southeast Asian and oral history. He was born and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia, and received his BA and BEd degrees from Acadia University. Between 1965 and 1969 he was enrolled in a Naval Officer Training Program, worked for Frontier College (now called United for Literacy), and taught both English and mathematics in Ghana. In 1969 he received a Commonwealth Scholarship from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he completed his PhD in 1976 on the oral traditions of the Nigerian highlands.

He returned to Nova Scotia in 1976 to work as an oral historian and researcher with Parks Canada, conducting an oral history of Kejimkujik National Park. In 1979 he was appointed Executive Director of the International Education Centre at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, where he helped to foster the university's institutional commitment to international education. He served as Dean of Arts from 1983-1989, and later as Coordinator of the Asian Studies Program and the International Development Studies Program.

Morrison has held visiting fellowships at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore), Hokkaido University of Education (Japan), and Jawaharlal Nehru University (India). He was an advisor to the Black Cultural Society for Nova Scotia and the Black Loyalist Museum, and a researcher and oral historian for the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. He is past president of the Japan Studies Association of Canada, the Canadian Oral History Association, the Nova Scotian Federation of Heritage, the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, and the Society for the Study of Ethnicity in Nova Scotia.

He is a former editor and current book review editor for FORUM, the Canadian Oral History Association journal. He has written and published in areas including oral history, military history, social history, ethnicity and adult education. In 2008 Morrison was named a Member of the Order of Canada, and in 2013 he received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his research and contributions to the field of oral history.