Kim Connor

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2018 - 2019 Academic Year

Immigrant Diets, Past and Present: Dining at the Grosse Île Quarantine Station in 1847

In the nineteenth century new technologies were created for managing and surveilling immigrants, and modern forms of border control are descended from those early institutions of immigration. It is impossible, then, to understand modern detention centers and refugee camps without considering how they developed historically. This project focuses on diet at the nineteenth-century St Lawrence quarantine station, near Québec City, and asks: how was food used to mould immigrants into Canadian citizens, and how did the immigrants react to this process? By answering this question, Connor draws attention to the links between nineteenth-century institutional feeding policies, and twenty-first century practices.

Kim Connor, Department of Anthropology

Kimberley Connor is a graduate student in the department of anthropology and her work combines archaeological analysis with archival research to study historical diets. Connor’s current project compares two nineteenth century institutions of immigration, a quarantine station and an immigration depot, to understand the role diet played in shaping immigrants within the British Empire. Connor received her BA in French and archaeology, and BA (honors) from the University of Sydney in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

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