A new book by Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Stepan Wood (LLB '92) and University of Toronto political economist Stephen Clarkson has been nominated for the 's prestigious for the best book on Canadian politics.

Examining Canadians’ complicated roles as agents and objects of global forces, shines an urgent light on the dangerous imbalances in contemporary forms of globalized law and governance. From French and British colonial politics to the SARS epidemic, Canadians have long known how it feels to be objects of global forces. But they are also agents who have helped build structures of global governance that have highly uneven impacts on prosperity, human security and the environment.

Right: Stepan Wood

The winner of the 2011 Smiley Prize will be announced at the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference in Waterloo, Ontario, on May 17.

A Perilous Imbalance examines Canada's experience of globalization in the context of three interlinked trends: the emergence of a neoconservative global “supra-constitution”, the paradoxical retreat and expansion of the Canadian nation-state and the growth of unconventional forms of governance beyond the state. It advocates a revitalization of the state as a vehicle for pursuing human security, ecological integrity and social emancipation, and for creating spaces in which progressive, alternative forms of law and governance can unfold.

With its critical analysis of the challenges faced by middle powers such as Canada in a globalizing world, A Perilous Imbalance further cements Osgoode's pre-eminence in the study of international and transnational legal issues, says Wood. The book has been very well received. Reviewers have praised it as “sophisticated, bold and accessible,” “important reading for anyone seeking to assess Canada’s legal and political engagement with globalization” and “a comprehensive account of Canada’s entanglement with globalization’s legal rules and institutions.”

The Smiley Prize honours the life and work of the late Donald V. Smiley (1921-1990), a leading Canadian political scientist and former Professor Emeritus at 91��ɫ. It is awarded each year to the best book published on Canadian government and politics – one award for an English-language book, one for French.

“I took an advanced seminar with Professor Smiley when I was an undergraduate political science major at 91��ɫ in the 1980s,” recalls Wood. “He fostered a challenging yet friendly atmosphere that brought out the best in his students. I feel particularly honoured to be associated with his name again after so many years.”

The book was the fruit of a cross-disciplinary collaboration that began when Wood and Clarkson were both virtual scholars in residence at the now defunct Law Commission of Canada. Working with Clarkson, whose contribution to the study of Canadian and North American political economy was recently recognized with the Order of Canada, was a highly rewarding experience for Wood.

“Collaborating with Stephen was a pleasure from start to finish,” says Wood. “Our very different knowledge and expertise complemented each other nicely and Stephen has been an exceptionally generous and supportive colleague and friend.”

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Organized by the , the (IRIS) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair for Reorienting Teacher Education Towards Sustainability, the Leadership for Sustainable Communities Symposium will focus on learning, leadership and climate change.

Leading experts from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom will gather at 91��ɫ’s Keele campus for the symposium. They will share their experiences and expertise in the area of climate change with students enrolled in summer courses that address issues of sustainability. The focus of the symposium will be a shared dialogue to examine the intersections between education, leadership and climate change.

91��ɫ Faculty of Education Professor Charles Hopkins (right) will open the conference. As the UNESCO Chair for Reorienting Teacher Education Towards Sustainability , Hopkins has developed and continues to coordinate an international network of institutions from 38 countries working on the reorientation of teacher education towards the issues inherent in sustainable development. Hopkins is also an adviser to both UNESCO and the United Nations University regarding the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, which began in 2005 and continues until 2014. A major contributor at previous UN summits on sustainability in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992 and in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002, he authored Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 of the Rio Earth Summit Action Plan on Education, Public Awareness & Training. Previously, Hopkins was a superintendent with the Toronto Board of Education.

Following Hopkins' opening comments, David Greenwood (left), a professor in the Department of Teaching & Learning at Washington State University, will deliver the keynote address, titled “Nature, Empire, and Paradox in Environmental and Sustainability Education”. Greenwood conducts research on the relationship between environment, culture, and education; environmental, place-based and sustainability education; and alternative education. He has published widely in journals such as: Harvard Educational Review, Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal, Curriculum Inquiry, Educational Administration Quarterly, Environmental Education Research, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education and a host of other publications. Greenwood is working on his second book, which will examine place and education.

After Greenwood's address, a panel of scholars from IRIS, the Faculty of Environmental Studies and will present their work as it relates to climate change.

Particpating in the panel are:

(left) is a professor of biology in 91��ɫ's , an ecologist and the director of IRIS. Bazely has conducted field research in many ecosystems, including arctic tundra, sub-arctic and temperate salt-marshes, deciduous forests, temperate managed grasslands and prairies, and her research findings on white-tailed deer and lesser snow geese have informed wildlife and conservation management in Canada. In 2003, she published a book on the ecology and control of invasive plants with Professor Judy Myers of the University of British Columbia. She is currently leading an interdisciplinary project based in Canada, Norway and Russia on human security in the Arctic, specifically the impact of oil and gas development on people and ecosystems.

Patricia (Ellie) Perkins (right) is a professor and program coordinator for the Faculty of Environmental Studies at 91��ɫ. An economist who is concerned with the relationship between international trade, the environment and local economies, Perkins is interested in globalization and how local economies may grow as an antidote to international trade. She also looks at international means of controlling air pollution in the Arctic and at the metals and minerals resource industries. Perkins is the primary investigator of a (SSHRC) funded research project titled "Collaborative Research for Equitable Public Participation in Watershed Governance: Canada, Brazil, Mozambique, South Africa, Kenya". In 2008, she was awarded the 91��ɫ Knowledge Mobilization Course Release for Community Engagement Award. Currently, she is editing a book on feminist ecological economics.

Professor (left) is director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s Mooting Program as well as its LLB/MES Program. He is actively involved in the work of the Standards Council of Canada and the International Organization for Standardization in the field of environmental management standards. He has published on numerous topics related to environmental and international affairs, including the ISO 14000 environmental management standards, global environmental governance, sustainability, regulatory reform, corporate social responsibility, Canadian forest law, international relations theory and international fisheries regulation. His current research focuses on the role of voluntary standards for environmental management and corporate social responsibility in the governance of corporate conduct.

In the afternoon, 91��ɫ film Professor Brenda Longfellow, award-winning filmmaker, writer and theorist, will screen her 2008 feature-length documentary Weather Report to symposium participants.

As the world reels from a series of unprecedented weather events, it is clear that climate change is forcing a fundamental re-evaluation of our most basic assumptions about energy, progress and values. Produced with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the National Film Board of Canada, looks at the dramatically evolving impacts and social implications of climate change. Travelling through North America, the Canadian Arctic, India and China, the film explores how the battle against climate change is implicated in the larger movement for sustainability and global justice.

Winner of the Sundance Channel's Green Award and the Bronze Remi Award at the 2008 WorldFest-Houston Independent International Film Festival, Longfellow's film has earned high praise from climatologists, educators and others in the field.

"Weather Report is a beautifully filmed documentary that travels the globe and is one of the first films to put a human face on the myriad impacts of climate change. Highly recommended," said Professor Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change in the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies at Yale University.

Left: Brenda Longfellow

"Weather Report masterfully accomplishes something scientists have not been very good at – putting a real, human face on the consequences of global warming and the resulting climate change," said Cindy Parker, co-director of the Program on Global Sustainability & Health in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Following the screening, there will be an informal round-table discussion on climate change and education with a focus on translating knowledge into action. The discussion will feature contributions from:

Professor Tony Shallcross is a visiting scholar from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). Shallcross is teaching ecology, ethics and education in the Graduate Program in Education Summer Institute at 91��ɫ. He has more than 20 years of experience working in schools and is a former deputy head and head of department. Before taking up his post at MMU, he was a lecturer in environmental studies at the University of Edinburgh.

is a professor in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Education where he coordinates the 91��ɫ/Seneca Institute for Mathematics, Science & Technology Education and the Graduate Diploma in Environmental/Sustainability Education. Alsop has taught in primary and secondary schools in inner-city London and coordinated the Centre for Learning & Research in Science Education at the Roehampton Institute at the University of Surrey. He has published widely in science and technology education and his recent books include and [co-edited with Larry Bencze and Erminia Pedretti]. He holds affiliated scholarly positions at the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, Mexico; the Roehampton Institute; and the Centre for Science, Mathematics &Technology Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. He is associated with a number of activist organizations including The Project for Altruistic Science and Technology Education.

Soni Craik is the acting executive director of EcoSource and has worked for the organization for over four years to extend its educational programming. Craik links her academic background with her interest in education for sustainability through child rights. She has worked for the International Institute for Child Rights & Development and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in South Africa as a facilitator of a participatory programs evaluation, specializing in working with elementary-aged children. Craik has also worked as an environmental education consultant for the Packard Foundation in Ethiopia and for the Child Welfare League of Canada in Cuba on a joint study of Havana’s social systems.

Rebecca Houwer is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Education at 91��ɫ. Prior to returning to university, she worked for several years with community-based organizations committed to educating youth. Her academic interests include: ethics and critical place-based education in urban contexts; participatory action research as praxis; ethical community-university relations; ecology without nature; and, collaborative place-making and place-recovery with, and by, forced migrants. She is a research assistant for the $1-million Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) grant by SSHRC led by 91��ɫ social work Professor  in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

The symposium will conclude with a wrap-up and pledge that will be delivered by Hopkins.

For more information, visit the  Web site.

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A Perilous Imbalance: The Globalization of Canadian Law and Governance, a new book co-authored by Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Stepan Wood, shines an urgent light on the dangerous imbalances in contemporary forms of globalized governance.

The book will launch Wednesday, April 7, from 12:30 to 2pm in the Private Dining Room of the Executive Learning Centre in the Seymour Schulich Building, Keele campus.

Co-author and political economy Professor Stephen Clarkson of the University of Toronto, a senior fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, will join Wood, a core faculty member of the  (IRIS), in introducing .

Left: Stepan Wood

The book advocates for a revitalization of the Canadian state as a vehicle to pursue human security, ecological integrity and social emancipation, and to create spaces for alternative forms of law and governance.

As citizens of a middle power, Canadians know how it feels to be objects of global forces, but they are also agents of globalization who have helped build structures of transnational governance that have highly uneven impacts on prosperity, human security and the environment, often for the worse. A Perilous Imbalance argues that these imbalances need to be recognized and corrected. It situates Canada’s experience of globalization in the context of three interlinked trends, the emergence of a global supraconsitution, the transformation of the nation-state and the growth of governance beyond the nation-state.

Jinyan Li, interim dean of 91��ɫ’s Osgoode Hall Law School; Stan Shapson, vice-president research & innovation; and 91��ɫ Professor Dawn Bazely, director of IRIS; will give the opening remarks, followed by commentary by Osgoode Professor Craig Scott.

Lunch will be served. For more information, contact Joanne Rappaport, Osgoode research coordinator, at jrappaport@osgoode.yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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91��ɫ's Hennick Centre for Business & Law has given its inaugural Collaborative Research Grants Program award to an interdisciplinary team of professors studying transnational business grievance.

The $5,000 research grant was awarded to Professors Burkard Eberlein and Alan Richardson of the Schulich School of Business and Professor Stepan Wood of Osgoode Hall Law School for their proposal, "The Dynamics of Interaction in Transnational Business Governance Regimes".

The winning team will use the funds to convene a multidisciplinary workshop in Toronto this fall to explore the interaction among transnational business governance initiatives such as civil society codes of conduct, industry self-regulatory standards, transgovernmental networks of officials and complex multi-stakeholder governance institutions.

In addition to the multidisciplinary workshop, the is launching a colloquia series in 2010-2011 for business and law scholars to present works-in-progress and receive feedback from scholars and graduate students from other disciplines. All applicants from the centre's 2010 Collaborative Research Grants Program will be invited to participate in the series.

For more information on the centre and its Collaborative Research Grants Program, contact Professor Archana Sridhar, associate director of the Hennick Centre for Business & Law, at ext. 55490.

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Scott, who is the director of Osgoode’s Jack & Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime & Security, has been awarded a 2010 Ikerbasque Fellowship by the Bacsque Foundation for Sience. The foundation is a granting agency established by the Government of the Basque Country in Spain in 2008 with the mission to consolidate the Basque Country as “a European point of reference for excellence in the field of research.”

Left: Craig Scott

The fellowship will support 12 months of personal research and collaboration with the Transnational Law Research Group of the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain. Scott will build on his existing scholarship pertaining to the civil liability aspects of corporate social responsibility in relation to human rights and environmental protection, as well as interact with Deusto’s Trans-Law Research Group to widen the scope of the group’s study of economic law.

Right: Stepan Wood

Wood, who is the coordinator of Osgoode's Juris Doctor-Master in Environmental Studies Joint Program and director of the Moot Court Program, has been awarded a Jean Monnet Fellowship at the Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. Wood will complete a project titled “ISO 26000 and the Legitimation of Transnational Governance Authority in the Field of Corporate Social Responsibility” during his sabbatical next year.

Wood is the fifth Osgoode faculty member to have been chosen as a Jean Monnet Fellow at EUI, following Professors Michael Mandel, Craig Scott, Peer Zumbansen and Robert Wai.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Carla �����������-�ѳܳ���é, professor of work and labour studies in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and research fellow in 91��ɫ’s , has received $1 million over six years from the (SSHRC).

�龱�����:���䲹������ �����������-�ѳܳ���é

The award will fund an international project to study the challenge climate change presents to Canadian employment and workplaces. �����������-�ѳܳ���é will examine seven Canadian employment sectors to seek policy, training, employment and workplace solutions to effectively assist Canada’s transition to a low-emission economy. By combining research, workplace education, policy recommendations and pilot projects in transnational work adaptation, her project will allow Canada to re-enter the international debate about how best to engage the work world in the struggle to slow global warming.

“We need to know more about the chain of processes that comprise work, employment and training in key Canadian industries and professions – and how their decision-makers understand and respond to the challenge that global warming poses to these processes,” says �����������-�ѳܳ���é. “Our second goal is to engage community partners active in the work world and the environmental community in research that identifies critical spaces for adaptation, drawing on their hands-on experience and linking it to the expertise of the academics.”

(CURA) awards, among the largest awarded by SSHRC, bring postsecondary institutions and community organizations together as equal research partners to jointly develop new knowledge and capabilities, provide research training opportunities, and enhance the ability of social sciences and humanities research to build knowledge in areas that affect Canadians and their changing communities.

“This award is the latest in a series of funding successes that reflect 91��ɫ’s leadership in national and international collaborative research projects,” said Stan Shapson, vice-president Research & Innovation. “Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century and climate research and innovation are priorities for 91��ɫ. Our researchers are working with industry, government at all levels, academia, and the community to find ways to address the complex issues it raises.”

�����������-�ѳܳ���é’s research team includes nationally- and internationally-based climate scientists, senior labour market actors and academics from a wide range of disciplines. A total of 23 researchers, 20 partners, and 10 universities in three countries will participate, including 91��ɫ Professors David Doorey, , , Jan Kainer, John-Justin McMurtry, and Steven Tufts.

Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science & Technology), announced the funding yesterday in Kitchener, Ont. Lipsig-Mummé’s project is one of 20 large-scale research projects funded through SSHRC’s CURA program.

“These grants highlight the excellence of our country’s talented researchers and recognize the importance of fostering collaboration to keep Canada at the leading-edge of research, development and innovation in the 21st century,” said Chad Gaffield, president of SSHRC.

For a complete list of CURA awards, visit Web site.

Project Partners:

• Canadian Steel Trade and Employment Congress
• Canadian Union of Postal Workers
• Centre for Labour Studies
• Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union
• Environmental Defence
• Forest Products Sector Council
• Learning for a Sustainable Future
• National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy
• National Union of Professional and General Employees
• Ontario Centre for Engineering and Public Policy/Professional Engineers
• Prism Economics and Analysis
• The Clean Air Partnership
• The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada
• Toronto Training Board
• United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Local 1000A
• United Steelworkers of Canada
• UNITE-HERE Canada
• Wood Manufacturing Council
• British Columbia Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

University Partners:

• Auckland University of Technology
• Institute of Land and Food Resources, University of Melbourne
• Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability, 91��ɫ
• Queen's University
• Ryerson University
• Simon Fraser University
• St. Thomas University
• University of British Columbia-Okenagan
• University of Manitoba
• University of Toronto

By Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer

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