A distinguished scholar from Rutgers University will deliver the Henrietta Harvey Lecture at Memorial University on Thursday, Oct. 22.

Dr. Bonnie McCay is Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor at Rutgers, where she chairs the Department of Human Ecology. Her lecture, “Catch Shares and Sharing the Catch: Considerations of Property and Community in Three Fisheries” will start at 7:00 p.m. in A-1046 of the Arts and Administration building. A reception will follow in the Arts atrium.

Dr. McCay will ask how people in three regions – Newfoundland’s northeast coast, Mexico’s north Pacific coast and the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast – responded to changes in their fisheries linked to environmental shifts. What roles have exclusive property rights and community played in shaping their responses, particularly their capacity to alter fisheries governance?

In addition to the Henrietta Harvey Lecture, Dr. McCay will take part in the Women’s Studies Speakers Series on Friday Oct. 23 at 3:00 p.m. in the Sally Davis Seminar Room (SN-4087).  She will co-present (with Carol Penton) on “The Work of Community: The Women’s Heat in the Great Fogo Island Race.” She will also speak on Monday Oct. 26 at 4:30 p.m. in A-4049d on “Marine Stewardship Council and Community-Based Fisheries: Three Case Studies (Spiny Lobster in Mexico, American Lobster in Maine and Canada, Northern Shrimp in Newfoundland).”  All three lectures are open to the public.

“Professor Bonnie McCay is a world leader in fisheries social science with a deep and enduring connection to Newfoundland's fisheries," said Dr. Barb Neis, co-director of SafetyNet, council member of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and professor of sociology at Memorial. "She completed the research for her doctoral research on Fogo Island in the 1970s and has returned to Fogo Island virtually every year since to update that research. No other social scientist has this depth of research experience with fisheries in this province. The author of many books and articles, Professor McCay has conducted research on multiple fisheries in the United States, Mexico and elsewhere. She was a pioneer in the field of research on fisheries as common pool resources and is a former president of the International Association for Studies in Common Property. I have heard Professor McCay present at many conferences and workshops and have little doubt that this Henrietta Harvey lecture will be not only highly relevant to the women and men of this place, but also thought provoking and rich in terms of its content and its message."                                                                          

The Henrietta Harvey Lecture

Henrietta Harvey was a Nova Scotian who came to Newfoundland in 1905 to visit her aunt, Lady Whiteway, the wife of Newfoundland’s prime minister. A year later she settled in St. John’s as the wife of St. John’s businessman John Harvey. When she died, in 1964, her will directed a substantial portion of her estate to Memorial University The Henrietta Harvey lectureship is possible in any year where there are funds left over from the funding of the Henrietta Harvey research chair, the primary purpose of the endowment fund left by Ms. Harvey.