BA (Queen’s), MA Queen’s, LL B (UNB), LL M (Harvard) is a member of the NB bar. After several years of private practice and lecturing in History and Law, Professor Bell joined the Faculty on a regular basis in 1985. He also taught Law for many years at the graduate level at Université de Sherbrooke. His usual subjects are Contracts, Legal History and Trusts. He is former president of AUNBT, the Association of University of New Brunswick Teachers.
Recent publications reflect diverse interests: “The Lady Music Teacher as Entrepreneur: Minnie Sharp and the Victoria Conservatory in the 1890s” (forthcoming BC Studies); “Bargaining for Contract Academic Staff at English Canadian Universities” (with J. M. Hughes) in Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society (2015 vol. 18/3, 377-94); American Loyalists to New Brunswick: The Ship Passenger Lists (2015), a companion volume to Loyalist Rebellion in New Brunswick: A Defining Conflict for Canada’s Political Culture (2013); “Slavery and Slave Law in the Maritimes” (with J. B. Cahill & H. A. Whitfield) in B. Walker (ed), African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays (2012), 363-420; “Petticoat Apostle: The Preaching Adventures of Susannah Lynds McCurdy”, in S. Henderson (ed), New England Planters in the Atlantic World, 1759-1830 (2012), 257-68; and “‘Slamming the Door on Brains’: Two Early 20th-Century Law Schools and the Narrowing of Educational Opportunity”, in C. Backhouse & W. Pue (eds), The Promise and Perils of Law: Lawyers in Canadian History (2009), 31-48.
Professor Bell is chancellor (legal officer) for the diocese of Fredericton and adjudicator in the NB Small Claims Court. He is a member of a number of advisory boards, including the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. He co-moderates the listserv for Anglican/Episcopal world history.