-'Living a Cold War Redefinition of Best Use: Bodies, Geopolitics and Legacies of Race-thinking at Base Gagetown, NB' Environmental History and the Cold War Conference, German Historical Institue, Washington, D.C., 24 March 2007
-'Unsettled: Alliances at Gagetown, New Brunswick Woods, Meadows and Memory of North Atlantic Alliances at Gagetown' American Society for Environmental History, Baton Rouge, March 2007
-‘The embodied implications of the Columbia Treaty,’ Festschriftkonference in honor of Prof. Paul Weiler, Harvard University, 4 Nov 2006'
-‘Grieving a market garden,’ American Society for Environmental History, St Paul, Minn, April 2006
-‘The role of attitudes and perceptions of water “quality”’ Canadian Water Network conference, Assuring Safe Drinking Water: Converting Hindsight to Foresight, Walkerton ON 30 May 2005
-‘Smells Like: Sources of Uncertainty in the History of an Environment’, Arpents, Carleton University 12 May 2005
- ‘Local Water Diversely Known,’ Society for the History of Technology, Annual Meeting, Amsterdam, 8 October 2004
- ‘Nuclear Generating Stations as Landscapes and Taskscapes in Canadian Hinterlands,’ ICOHTEC conference, Technological Landscapes, Bochum Germany 20 August 2004
- ‘The disruptive democracy of smell: appraising risk at the Bruce Heavy Water plant’, Canadian Historical Association, Quebec City meetings, 27 May 2001 and Green College Seminar, 5 February 2002
- 'Renovating Kitchens: Macroeconomic theory and kitchen aesthetics', Keynote address, Kitchens:Design, Technology and Work, 10 November 2000 Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington Del and Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, 7 April 2001
-'Ways of Seeing and the Political Economy,' International Conference of Critical Geographers, Vancouver 10 August 1997
-'Maple as Modern,' Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Chapel Hill, 8 June 1996
-'Gender, industrial design and industrial competitiveness' Canadian Historical Association 26 August 1995
-'On Doing Gender History: methodological issues' 18th International Congress of the Historical Sciences Montreal 29 August 1995
-'Design and Marketing in the 1950s,' Hagley Museum, Centre for Business History, Wilmington Delaware 9 April 1994
-'Keynesianism, Consumerism and Gender Politics in Canada and Sweden 1943-56' Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Harvard University 6 March 1994
-'What Makes Washday Less Blue: Resource Use and the Gendered Political Economy in Canada' Oxford University 10 September 1993 and Royal Society of Canada 12 February 1994
-'Deconstructing Production/Consumption in Labor History' Social Science History Association, Baltimore 6 November 1993
-'Recent writing about women and industrialisation' Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Vassar College 13 June 1993
-'Re-presenting woman: new construction of female gender' Women and View Symposium Vancouver 23 January 1993
-'Paternalism reconsidered' Colloque Jacques Cartier, Universite de Quebec a Montreal, 8 October 1992
-'Ethics, Privacy and Oral History,' Canadian Historical Association and Canadian Sociological Association, June 4, 1991
-'Gender and business history' plenary address, annual meeting of the Business History Conference (US), 22 Mar 1991
- 'Breadwinning mothers: an historical example,' Household strategies and the boundaries of paid work, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, 20 April 1988
-'Womanly militance, neighbourly wrath: new scripts for old roles in a small town textile strike', International Symposium on Women, Work and Place, McGill University, Department of Geography, February 11-12, 1988
-'Gender myths in small Ontario towns,' Mythologies and Myths we live by, University College, University of Toronto, 21 January 1988
-'The Skilled Emigrant and her kin,' North American Labor History Conference, November 1986.
- 'Gender Divisions in the Canadian Hosiery Industry,' Social Science History Association, St. Louis, Oct. 1986.
-'Rethinking work and kinship', Women and Work Workshop, University of Waterloo, April 17, 1986.
-'When is knitting men's work: a transatlantic comparison in the sexual division of labour', American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York, December 1985.
- 'Range and Limits on the Local Reconstruction of Gender,' Canadian Historical Association, June l985.
- 'Leicester immigrants in Canada', History Workshop 18, Leicester, England, Nov. 18, 1984.
- 'Writing the history of Women and children: nature and hierarchy.' New Directions for the Studies of Ontario's Past, McMaster University, September 6, 1984.
-'Work on the farm', Ontario Museums Association, Industrious in Their Habits, Toronto, January 27, 1983.
-'The Permeability of the Private Sphere', Commonwealth Labour History Conference, University of Warwick. September 1981.
-'Child Immigration to the Kawarthas'. The Kawartha Conference, Trent University, June 21, 1981.
-'Being Young and Canadian in the Past', conference on the History of the Modern Family, Wilfrid Laurier University, January 12, 1980.
-'Household and Family: The Canadian Case', conference on Childhood and Schooling, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, February 1979.
-'Miss Macpherson, Miss Rye and the Beginning of Child Emigration to Canada', McGill Social History Conference, January 1975.