Meet Dr. Joel Konrad. He’s a Cultural Heritage Specialist on our Built Heritage team. This family man loves bridges, playing music, exploring creepy basements and navigating the sea. Okay, that last thing isn’t true… yet.

I grew up near a nineteenth-century fort on the Penobscot River in Maine and loved exploring the passageways
during family outings. This, and my time playing around archaeological sites in Maine and Montana as a kid, led to an interest in all things historical. By the time I traveled to London in my late teens I was hooked on historic spaces and heritage preservation.

I completed an MA at the University of Ottawa and a PhD at McMaster University, both in history. In addition, I held a research fellowship at Brown University and completed post-graduate courses in Cultural Heritage Planning at the University of Victoria.

Simon Schama… or a sea captain.

This is not a fair question to ask an historian. I would probably choose either Theodor de Bry, who created some of the most amazing images and travel compendiums of the sixteenth century (really the world’s first National Geographic editor) or Christopher Wren, who was given the monstrous task of recreating London’s architectural landscape after the fire of 1666. Oh, or Francis Bacon, who was so devoted to his empirical epistemology that he died of pneumonia while attempting to record the preserving properties of extreme cold.

Old London Bridge (1209-1762), complete with buildings and houses atop its deck.

Finding a ‘lost’ truss bridge in the middle of a mosquito-infested swamp.

…fear of the unseen (especially the thought of giant bugs in dingy basements).

…take pictures.

…time is on my side.

In descending order: Family time, biking, playing music, reading, socializing, climbing…

The inside of Hayden White’s mind in 1972, just before the publication of his ‘monumental’ work, Metahistory.