Cities are my main research topic. I study them through the history of their concrete and symbolic formation. I am interested in showing that the efforts involved in the physical organization of cities shape the way they are governed and help structure social and political relationships at this level. This way of seeing the history of cities as a product of interrelated physical and social factors has led to published papers on the development of public spaces for culture and recreation in Montreal and Toronto in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and on the structuring of the municipal domain through drinking water and wastewater networks. I recently published a paper on evolving relationships between Montreal and water, in an attempt to reconstitute the role of water and its successive transformations in the city's urbanization process since the early 19^th century. Since then I have been pursuing my work on the history of the environment at the larger scale of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence hydrographic system.

I am also interested in issues relating to the writing and public uses of history in theoretical and practical terms. I have taken part in various debates and roundtables on the teaching of history. I also sometimes collaborate on mounting exhibitions and producing historical documents for various audiences.

My research themes are as follows:

1. Intra-continental migrations (North America) and the immigration of Italians to Quebec
2. The history of cultural policies from a comparative perspective (United States/Canada/Europe)
3. The history of key concepts and their uses in the social sciences and government policies (assimilation; integration; incorporation; multiculturalism; inter-culturalism; transculturalism; diversity)
4. Cinematic narrations of the past (documentaries and feature films)

My research concerns all aspects of the history of New France, and its European ramifications. I am interested in the circulation of people, goods, knowledge and information between Native and French America and Europe (1660-1800). I am continuing my work on North American fur trade routes, in a hemispheric space extending from Native American lands eastward all the way to Asia.

A project on the circulation of knowledge considers natural history as a means of appropriation, for the moment through the work of Jean-François Gaultier (1708-1756), the King's physician in Quebec City and correspondent for the Académie royale des sciences.

I am also exploring the field of historiography and popular memory, and in particular the fate of the French Regime in Canada after the Conquest of 1759.