In honour of National Postdoc Appreciation Week, the UBC History Department is proud to celebrate and feature the research of our 2025/2026 postdocs, Drs. Dexter Fergie and Seema Mahi. Their presence has enriched the department with their academic rigour and originality in their respective areas. Scroll down to learn more about their scholarly activities.
About Dr. Dexter Fergie
Dr. Dexter Fergie (PhD Northwestern University 2024) is a US and global historian, specializing in the history of international organizations, infrastructure, US foreign relations, and ideas. His book project, titled The World’s Headquarters: The United States, the United Nations, and the Place of Global Governance, 1945-1991, is a study of place and power. It investigates the cultural, social, and political implications of anchoring the post-World War II global governance system in New York. Drawing on archives from the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and India, as well as oral histories he conducted with former UN personnel, Dr. Fergie shows how locating the UN in New York opened a portal between the domestic and foreign, through which tens of thousands of diplomats, international civil servants, their spouses and children, and more entered. His book argues that, thanks to the headquarters, many processes that we typically consider to be “domestic” history, such as McCarthyism, have an international history and that international processes, such as decolonization, have an overlooked American history.
Dr. Fergie’s writing has appeared in major outlets including Diplomatic History, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Bloomberg. He has been the recipient of prestigious awards and fellowships, including the UBC Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship (2025-26), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Scholarship, the Mackenzie King Traveling Fellowship, and the Truman Library Dissertation Year Fellowship. He will teach a course at UBC this year drawn from his research specialty.
About Dr. Seema Mahi
Dr. Seema Mahi (PhD University of Delhi 2024) joined the History Department in November 2024 as a postdoctoral fellowship for the SSHRC Partnership Development grant led by Prof. Anne Murphy with Suraj Yengde (Harvard University), entitled “The Eradication of Caste: Building Community-University Partnerships for Change”. As the Postdoctoral Fellow in Dalit Studies, Dr. Mahi is a specialist on caste-based discriminatory practices and is now directing her research toward experiences in Canada. Her work focuses on field narratives and shedding light on deeply entrenched social inequality, and examines the history of immigrants impacted by caste-based discrimination, the history and contemporary forms of caste experiences, and their intersections with migration and identity. Building on existing scholarly discourse, she investigates the presence of caste-based inequality in North America, and the history of how “the untouchable” communities migrated to British Columbia in 1906 and faced inequality at workplaces such as lumber mills.
Dr. Mahi recently presented her research on “Caste Practices and Experiences in Canada: Evidence from the Field” at CSASA-ACESA: South Asian Studies in Canadian Academic Ecosystems as part of a panel on illuminating margins and decolonising structures. Her research abstract advocates for a better understanding of the dynamics of caste to enable the formulation of required policy programs to uphold the democratic ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity. At UBC, she will teach a course on Dalit studies this year drawn from her research specialty.
She also recently published a book review on Dalits: Past, Present and Future by Anand Teltumbde.
About National Postdoc Appreciation Week
What is National Postdoc Appreciation Week? Established in 2009, the week recognizes the significant contributions that postdoctoral scholars make to research and discovery. From September 15th to 19th, 2025, organizations from across the globe participate by holding special events and celebrating their postdoctoral scholars.
