Education
Ph.D., History, University of Virginia, expected 2027
M.A., History, University of Virginia, 2023
M.A., History, University of Calgary, 2020
B.A. (with Distinction), History, University of Calgary, 2016

Biography
I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate, originally from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. My academic career began with the study of Elizabethan England, where debates over sovereignty, jurisdiction, and property under Elizabeth I drew me toward the history of law. After two years of professional experience in the legal sector in Canada, I became even more invested in how legal institutions operate and how legal frameworks organize power. Before coming to Virginia, I completed a 2-year M.A. in history at the University of Calgary, where I specialized in English legal history. My Master's thesis examined the centralization of local government in early modern England. I later earned an M.A. in history at the University of Virginia, focused on legal jurisdiction and Indigenous land claims in seventeenth-century Virginia.

Research
My dissertation, "Drainage, Jurisdiction, and Identity from the Fens to the Chesapeake, 1580–1650," treats England’s Fenlands and colonial Virginia as one connected legal and environmental story. I examine how early modern "improvement," the drive to drain marshes, build dikes, survey land, and reorganize property for productivity and public good, moved between these places. Using English water-law records in Lincolnshire together with charters, patents, and statutes in Virginia, I trace shared methods, personnel, and language. These practices ordered water and refashioned the land but also redefined who counted as a lawful member of the community. By following the promoters of drainage and settlement across the Atlantic, my project shows that state-building in England and colonization in Virginia worked together. Landscapes became laboratories of governance in which legal ideas about improvement produced new boundaries, new authorities, and new rules of belonging.

Alongside my dissertation, I am curating an exhibition that brings this research into public conversation. Opening at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library in September 2026, the exhibition features seventeenth-century legal documents, maps, English, and Native American material culture to explore how legal thought and landscape transformation shaped the making of empire.

Exhibitions
“Taming Waters, Transforming Worlds" (forthcoming, September 2026–June 2027)
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Lead Curator

“Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style and Racial Uplift” (2022)
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Graduate Curator and Community Engagement Coordinator

“The Taking of the Land: The English Colonization of Virginia” (2021)
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia
Digital Exhibition Designer

Publications
LeClair, Stacey. “The Holsinger Studio: The Customer Experience.” In Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style and Racial Uplift, exhibition catalogue edited by Holly Robertson. Charlottesville: Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, 2025.

Awards and Honors

• Albert Gallatin Research Fellowship, University of Virginia, Fall 2025
• SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2021–2025
• Canada Graduate Scholarships – Doctoral (CGS-D), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2021
• Graduate Fellow, John L. Nau III History and Principles of Democracy Lab, University of Virginia, 2021–2022
• Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master’s (CGS-M), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2019–2020