It was a conversation around the family dinner table that gave Andrew McDonald the idea to share his research through video.
The Professor with Brock's Department of History and Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies said his daughter was using many TED lessons videos from a non-profit organization devoted to spreading ideas in her high school classes.
"We spent a lot of time over suppers during the pandemic talking about what she had been watching," says McDonald, the recipient of this year's Faculty of Humanities Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity. "My family said one night, Why don't you do one on the Sea Kings?'"
With COVID curtailing research travel and access to libraries, archives and documents, McDonald was looking for new outlets for his work. His TED-Ed pitch was accepted, and he spent the rest of 2020 working with TED to develop the short video The Rise and Fall of the Kingdom of Man. The video was published in 2021 and currently has more than 945,000 views.
