Jeff Wigelsworth
Biography
Jeff Wigelsworth is a historian who came to Red Deer Polytechnic in 2010. Jeff teaches in the Bachelor of Arts in Multidisciplinary Studies, University Arts Diploma and Bachelor of Arts in Psychology programs. His Classics and History courses range chronologically from antiquity to the twentieth century with a variety of thematic or national concentrations that prioritize people and their stories and highlight applied knowledge of the past.
His current research derives from that teaching:
1) Use of state violence to change people’s minds. Following fifteen years of students asking, why didn’t they just talk it out, Jeff seeks answers through a multidisciplinary investigation.
2) From his Witch Craze course Jeff published a solution to the paradox of early-modern thinkers being able to only conceive of female witches with the fact that men were 25% of people accused of witchcraft. He is planning an analytical examination of the use of the word “witch.”
Jeff’s previous scholarship centres on the intellectual culture of England (1600-1800) with an emphasis on deists and their critics resulted in writing two books and more than a dozen articles. A 2023 article examined the use of Newton’s mathematical style to predict the apocalypse as a counterpoint to deism.
Past early-modern scholarship includes a book and several articles that explore the efforts of All Souls College, Oxford to maintain academic independence from the demands of Parliament. Within the history of science, Jeff investigates advertisements in English newspapers as a means of considering science as a commodity during the early stages of media proliferation which resulted in writing a book and multiple articles.
Education
- Postdoctoral Fellowship (History of Science), Dalhousie University
- Ph.D. (History), University of Saskatchewan
- M.A. (History of Science), University of Calgary
- B.A. (History), University of Calgary