Linda Trimble, PhD, MA, BA

Area of Study / Keywords

Gender Media Leadership

About

Linda Trimble was born in Lethbridge and raised in Bowden, Alberta. After completing a BA in Political Science at the University of Calgary she worked in the Public Affairs Department at Petro-Canada for a couple of years. Dr. Trimble completed MA and PhD degrees at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario (not Kingston Jamaica, sadly). In 1989 she began her position at the University of Alberta, and she's been here ever since. Dr. T, as she likes to be called, is the recipient of two teaching awards and an award for excellence in mentoring.

Supervision:

Dr. Trimble is interested in supervising honors and course-based MA students working in the areas of gender and/or media. This offer is only good for two years, however, as she is soon to retire.]

Selected Publications:

2021: Angelia Wagner, Linda Trimble, Jennifer Curtin, Meagan Auer and VKG Woodman. "Representations of Political Leadership Qualities in News Coverage of Australian and Canadian Government Leaders." Politics & Gender (published online).

2020: Meagan Auer, Linda Trimble, Jennifer Curtin, Angelia Wagner and VKG Woodman. "Invoking the Idealized Family to Assess Political Leadership and Legitimacy: News Coverage of Australian and Canadian Premiers." Feminist Media Studies (published online).

2019: Linda Trimble, Jennifer Curtin, Angelia Wagner, Meagan Auer, VKG Woodman, and Bethan Owens. "Gender Novelty and Personalized News Coverage in Australia and Canada." International Political Science Review, 42 (2): 164-178.

2019: Angelia Wagner, Linda Trimble, Shannon Sampert. “One Smart Politician: Gendered Media Discourses of Political Leadership in Canada." Canadian Journal of Political Science, 52 (1): 141-162.

2017: Linda Trimble. Ms. Prime Minister: Gender, Media and Leadership. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

2017: Angelia Wagner, Linda Trimble, Shannon Sampert and Bailey Gerrits. "Gender, Competitiveness and Candidate Visibility in Newspaper Coverage of Canadian Party Leadership Contests." International Journal of Press/Politics, 22 (4): 471-489.

2017: Bailey Gerrits, Linda Trimble, Daisy Raphael, Angelia Wagner and Shannon Sampert. “Political Battlefield: Aggressive Metaphors, Gender, and Power in News Coverage of Canadian Party Leadership Contests.” Feminist Media Studies, 17 (6): 1088-1103.

2016: Linda Trimble. “Julia Gillard and the Gender Wars.” Politics & Gender, 12 (2): 296–316.

2015: Linda Trimble, Daisy Raphael, Shannon Sampert, Angelia Wagner and Bailey Gerrits. “Politicizing Bodies: Hegemonic Masculinity, Heteronormativity, and Racism in News Representations of Canadian Political Party Leadership Contests.” Women’s Studies in Communication, 38 (3): 314-330.

Pathways to the Premiership: Representation, Motivation and Impact of Women Premiers in Canada and Australia

This SSHRC Partnership Development Grant-funded project establishes a new partnership between university and government institutions whose aim is to illuminate women’s access to and impact in political leadership roles. We plan to achieve this objective by exhaustively detailing and comparing the representative contexts, pathways to the premiership, power and tenure, and impact of the 15 women premiers and a paired sample of 15 equivalent men premiers in Canada and Australia. Personal interviews with women premiers will reveal their motivations and the obstacles and opportunities encountered along the pathway to power. When analyzed together, these rich quantitative and qualitative databases allow us to test a series of theoretical propositions about political career paths and representative impact, offering practical insights and strategies for political parties and community organizations devoted to achieving equality in political representation. 

Gendered Mediation Project

A SSHRC funded study called the Gendered Mediation Project (GMP) analyzes the Globe and Mail's reporting about Canadian national political party leadership contests held between 1975 and 2013. I am the PI on the study, working with Co-investigator Shannon Sampert, and a team of dynamic graduate research assistants: Angelia Wagner, now a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at McGill University; Daisy Raphael, Vanier Scholar and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Alberta; and Bailey Gerrits, Trudeau Scholar and Ph.D. candidate at Queen’s University. We have presented ten papers at scholarly conferences and published three journal articles (listed below), with two more in the revision stage. Right now we are writing a book about the key findings of our study.

Bailey Gerrits, Linda Trimble, Daisy Raphael, Angelia Wagner and Shannon Sampert. 2017. “Political Battlefield: Aggressive Metaphors, Gender, and Power in News Coverage of Canadian Party Leadership Contests.” Feminist Media Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1315734

Linda Trimble, Daisy Raphael, Shannon Sampert, Angelia Wagner and Bailey Gerrits. 2015. “Politicizing Bodies: Hegemonic Masculinity, Heteronormativity, and Racism in News Representations of Canadian Political Party Leadership Contests.” Women’s Studies in Communication, 38 (3): 314-330.

Shannon Sampert, Linda Trimble, Angelia Wagner and Bailey Gerrits. 2014. “Jumping the Shark: Mediatization of Canadian Party Leadership Contests, 1975-2012.” Journalism Practice 8 (3): 279-294. (Reprinted in Making Sense of Mediatized Politics: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, ed. Jesper Stromback and Frank Esser: 135-150. Routledge: Abington and New York.)

Linda Trimble, Angelia Wagner, Shannon Sampert, Daisy Raphael and Bailey Gerrits. 2013. “Is it Personal? Gendered Mediation in Newspaper Coverage of Canadian National Party Leadership Contests, 1975 – 2012.” International Journal of Press/Politics, 18 (4): 462-481.

Women Prime Ministers Project

From my SSHRC-funded project on news coverage of women prime ministers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, I recently finished writing a book called Ms. Prime Minister: Gender, Media and Leadership, which is under contract with University of Toronto Press. Other publications from this project include:

Linda Trimble. 2016. “Julia Gillard and the Gender Wars.” Politics & Gender, 12 (2): 296 -316.

Linda Trimble. 2013. “Melodrama and Gendered Mediation: Television Coverage of Women’s Leadership ‘Coups’ in New Zealand and Australia.” Feminist Media Studies, 14 (4): 663-678.

Linda Trimble, Natasja Treiberg and Sue Girard. 2010. “’Kim-Speak’: Gendered Mediation of Kim Campbell During the 1993 Canadian National Election.” Recherches Feministes 23 (1): 29-52.

Linda Trimble and Natasja Treiberg. 2010. “’Either Way, There’s Going to be a Man in Charge’: Media Representations of New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.” In Cracking the Highest Glass Ceiling ed. Rainbow Murray. Santa Barbara and Oxford: Praeger, 116-136.

Research

Dr. Trimble's current research focuses on news coverage of political leaders, especially the ways in which media representations reflect gendered norms, stereotypes and assumptions. She is the Principal Investigator on a SSHRC project, called Pathways to the Premiership, which investigates the career paths of women premiers in Australia and Canada.

Teaching

I will be offering POLS 448/558, Gender Politics and Mass Media, in winter 2022 and winter 2023.