Past Events

Description

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance of cities as partners in implementing and enforcing national and provincial policies, programs, and services. How can federal-provincial-municipal collaboration be improved? What models exist for all three orders government to come together and address shared policy challenges?

On February 2, Dr. Neil Bradford will address these questions by revisiting Canada’s history of successful tri-level agreements between federal, provincial, and municipal governments on issues from homelessness to economic development and infrastructure. Working from his recent IMFG paper, Dr. Bradford will show how these agreements offer a model for a more collaborative form of policymaking that includes all orders of government, including municipalities, and communities.

Neil Bradford is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Governance, Leadership, and Ethics program at Huron University College at Western. His research focuses on place-based public policy and multi-level governance, and has been published in journals such as Urban Affairs Review, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society. He is also the author of multiple reports on urban and regional development and intergovernmental relations for Canadian and international research institutes, including the Institute for Research on Public Policy, the Canadian Urban Institute, and the OECD.

Kofi Hope is a Rhodes Scholar and has a Doctorate in Politics from Oxford University. He is the Senior Policy Advisor at the Wellesley Institute and the co-founder of Monumental, a new start-up focused on supporting organizations work towards an equitable recovery from COVID-19. He is an emeritus Bousfield Scholar and current adjunct professor at UofT’s School of Urban Planning. He was founder and former Executive Director of the CEE Centre for Young Black Professionals. In 2017 he was winner of the Jane Jacobs Prize and in 2018 a Rising Star in Toronto Life’s Power List.

Description

Join this virtual event via Zoom: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/86914380300
Meeting ID: 869 1438 0300
Passcode: 464253

With the launch of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Japan’s colonies saw the full-scale launch of kōminka (imperialization) policies designed to turn the colonized into loyal subjects of the emperor. In this book talk, Christina Yi will explore the central role kokugo (national language) ideology played in the articulation and promotion of imperial identity during the latter years of Japan’s colonial rule, exploring how and why “Korean” literature was repositioned within a larger Japanese language canon. Although it is often understood that the kōminka movement introduced a new paradigm of the “imperial subject,” who might be included in this category varied according to class, gender, ethnicity, and place.

This presentation will elaborate on this point through a close comparative analysis of Kim Sŏngmin’s 1936 novella Hantō no geijutsukatachi (Artists of the Peninsula) and its 1941 film adaptation Hantō no haru (Spring on the Peninsula; dir. Yi Pyŏng-il).

CHRISTINA YI is Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature at the University of British Columbia. She is a specialist of modern Japanese-language literature and culture, with a particular focus on issues of postcoloniality, language ideology, genre, and cultural studies. Her first monograph, Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea, was published by Columbia University Press in 2018. She was also the co-editor for a special feature on zainichi (resident) Korean literature and film for Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture 12 (2019).

Description

How do governments cultivate loyal citizens? Leading China experts present their latest research on patriotic education in China and ideology.

Panelists’ Bios:

KARRIE J. KOESEL is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame where she specializes in the study of contemporary Chinese and Russian politics, authoritarianism, and religion and politics. She is the author of Religion and Authoritarianism: Cooperation, Conflict and the Consequences (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and co-editor of Citizens & the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing China and Russia (Oxford University Press, 2020). She is currently working on a book manuscript, Learning to Be Loyal: Patriotic Education in Authoritarian Regimes that explores how authoritarian leaders cultivate popular legitimacy and loyalty among young people; how they socialize citizens and the future elite to be patriotic and supportive; and whether these strategies free autocrats from the need to rely so heavily on coercion to stay in power.  

RORY TRUEX is an Assistant Professor in Princeton’s Department of Politics and Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His research focuses on Chinese politics and theories of authoritarian rule. His book Making Autocracy Work: Representation and Responsiveness in Modern China investigates the nature of representation in authoritarian systems, specifically the politics surrounding China’s National People’s Congress (NPC). He argues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engineering a system of “representation within bounds” in the NPC, fostering information revelation but silencing political activism. Original data on deputy backgrounds and behaviors is used to explore the nature of representation, policymaking, and incentives in this constrained system. He is currently working on a new set of projects on repression, human rights, and dissent in contemporary China. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, China Quarterly, among other journals.  

YINGYI MA is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Provost Faculty Fellow on internationalization at Syracuse University. In 2019, she was selected as a Public Intellectual Fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations.  Professor Ma is a sociologist of education and migration. She has published extensively in the areas of education stratification, international student mobility and higher education in China. Her new book, Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese Undergraduates Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education, is published by Columbia University Press in Feb 2020, and has since been featured in various national and international media outlets such as Washington Post and Times Higher Education. She got her PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins University in 2007.

Description

This presentation of a book project draws on the previous research on censorship in the Eastern bloc, but advances the discussion and the theory of state-socialist censorship by 1. re-focusing the inquiry from literature to social sciences and humanities; 2. attempting a more complex treatment of writing and publishing under the conditions of censorship, by bringing together multiple actors and levels at which censorship was deployed; 3. striving for a nuanced account of repression, resistance, negotiation, and complicity. It looks at all stages of the writing process from the inception of an idea to post-publication reception and at the institutional and policy context surrounding this process. The agency and negotiations of the creative actors, rather than their instrumentalization by censoring repressions of the state institutions stand in the centre of this inquiry.

Czechoslovakia and Hungary are the countries of investigation, but the project takes a broader perspective that includes the former Soviet Union and most other countries of East Central and Eastern Europe. Oral history interviews constitute the backbone of the project, complemented by contemporary science-policy documents and the archive of the Editorial Board of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

Libora Oates-Indruchová obtained her PhD from Lancaster University, UK and a „habilitation“ in Literary and Cultural Studies from Szeged University, Hungary. She is Professor of Sociology of Gender at the University of Graz (A). Her research interests include cultural representations of gender, gender and social change, censorship, and narrative research, with a focus on state-socialist and post state-socialist Czech Republic. She recently published “Self-Censorship and Aesopian Language of Scholarly Texts of Late State Socialism” (The Slavonic and East European Review 96 [2018], 4: 614-641). Her book Censorship in Czech and Hungarian Academic Press, 1969-89: Snakes and Ladders was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2020.

Description

This lecture will summarize the significance of Prime Minister Menachem Begin for Israeli diplomatic history. It will offer insights regarding his relevance for studying international relations more broadly. The lecture will be aimed at beginners and non-specialists. Insights will be shared from the author’s dissertation and book, The Limits of a Grand Strategy Paradigm in International Relations: Lessons from Israeli History, 1977–1983.

Dr. Ari Barbalat recently completed his PhD in International Relations from UCLA, graduating in June 2020. He volunteers for the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture and Project Abraham (with Toronto’s Yazidis community). He lives in Thornhill.

Description

In November, 2020, 15 countries comprising all of ASEAN plus Japan, China, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand decided to meet the economic challenge of the pandemic by signing the world’s largest regional trade agreement. What does the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership mean for Canada, for the new Biden Administration, and for leadership in Asia? The Centre for the Study of Global Japan is partnering with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and UBC’s Centre for Japan Research to talk with international experts on the implications of RCEP.

Guest Speakers:

– Wendy Cutler, Vice President and Managing Director, Washington, D.C. Office, Asia Society Policy Institute

Wendy Cutler is Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) and the managing director of the Washington D.C. office. In these roles, she focuses on expanding ASPI’s presence in Washington and on leading initiatives that address challenges related to trade and investment, as well as women’s empowerment in Asia. She joined ASPI following an illustrious career of nearly three decades as a diplomat and negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), including serving as Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. In that capacity, she worked on a range of U.S. trade negotiations and initiatives in Asia.

– Shihoko Goto, Deputy Director for Geoeconomics and Senior Associate for Northeast Asia, Asia Program, Wilson Center

Shihoko Goto is the Deputy Director for Geoeconomics and the Senior Northeast Asia Associate at the Wilson Center’s Asia Program. She is a leading expert on economics and politics in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, as well as U.S. policy in the region. A seasoned journalist and analyst, she spent ten years reporting from Tokyo and Washington for Dow Jones and UPI on the global economy, international trade, and Asian markets and politics. A contributing editor to The Globalist, Goto previously worked for the World Bank and has been awarded fellowships from the East-West Center and the Knight Foundation, among others.

– Michael Plummer, Director, School of Advanced International Studies Europe, and Eni Professor of International Economics, Johns Hopkins University

Professor Michael Plummer is Director of SAIS Europe since 2014 and the Eni Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, as well as a non-resident senior fellow at the East-West Center. He was Head of the Development Division of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2010-2012), a professor at Brandeis University (1992-2001) and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian Economics (2007-2015). He was president of the American Committee on Asian Economic Studies (ACAES) from 2008 until 2015. A former Fulbright Chair in Economics and Pew Fellow in International Affairs at Harvard University, he has been an Asian Development Bank distinguished lecturer on several occasions and team leader of projects for various organizations including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the United Nations, the ADB, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. He has consulted many governments in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe on issues related to economic cooperation and is co-author/editor of over two-dozen books, and author of over 100 journal articles and book chapters.

– Jeff Reeves, Vice-President of Research, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada

Dr. Jeffrey Reeves is Vice-President of Research for the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. Prior to joining APF Canada, Dr. Reeves was the Director of Asian Studies at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Dr. Reeves has over 15 years direct experience living and working in Asia, including as an Associate Professor with the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in the United States, as a Research Fellow with Griffith University in Australia, and as a University Instructor at Peking University in the People’s Republic of China. Dr. Reeves has worked with the United Nations Development Program and World Wildlife Foundation in Beijing and as a Research Assistant with the London School of Economics and Political Science’s (LSE) Asia Research Centre in London. Dr. Reeves served in the United States Peace Corps from 2001 to 2003 in Khovd, Mongolia.

– Yves Tiberghien, Professor of Political Science, Director Emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research, and Co-Director of the Center for Japanese Research, University of British Columbia

Yves Tiberghien (Ph.D. Stanford University, 2002; Harvard Academy Scholar 2006; Fulbright Scholar 1996) is a Professor of Political Science, Director Emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research, and Co-Director of the Center for Japanese Research. Yves is also Distinguished Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada. His current research focuses on the ongoing transition in the global economic and environmental order. Latest book:Geopolitics in East Asia: Response to COVID-19 (forthcoming 2021).

– Deanna Horton, Senior Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto (moderator)

As part of her Canadian foreign service career, Deanna Horton spent a total of twelve years in Japan, including as Deputy Head of Mission, and also served as Ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. She was a NAFTA negotiator and then spent seven years in Washington, most recently as Minister (Congressional, Public and Intergovernmental Affairs). As a Munk School Senior Fellow she has led a digital mapping project on Canada’s footprint in Asia https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/canasiafootprint/ and related research on technology multinationals. Ms. Horton is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and a Canadian Global Affairs Institute Fellow and she writes on economic and trade policy issues with a focus on Asia. She received a Diploma in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Bologna Center, a M.A. (International Affairs) from Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and a B.A. (Hons) from McGill University. She also spent two years studying Japanese at the U.S. State Department Foreign Service Institute in Yokohama, Japan.

Description

Matthew J Walton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research and publications focus on ethnic politics and Buddhist political thought in Myanmar, including his book Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar (2016, Cambridge University Press).  

Jacques Bertrand is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto; Director, Masters’ Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Studies (Asian Institute, Munk School). He has conducted extensive research on the peace process in Myanmar, and is the co-author with Alexandre Pelletier and Ardeth Thawnghmung of Winning by Process: The State, Democratic Transition, and Ethnic Conflict in Myanmar (forthcoming 2021, Cornell UP).

Description

The final recommendations for Toronto’s Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) policy are planned to go before City Council in the first half of 2021. The IZ tool has been implemented across the United States and in the United Kingdom as a way to produce new affordable housing by compelling developers to set aside a portion of their new housing units as affordable housing. What lessons can be extracted from these localities to help inform the implementation of IZ in Toronto? Two of our panelists will present their research, which evaluated how well IZ worked in London, UK and three US regions (San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC area, and Boston suburbs) to generate more affordable housing and create mixed-income communities. The formal presentations will be followed by a discussion on how these experiences from other jurisdictions might be considered in the Toronto context.

Panelists

Deanna Chorney is a project manager with the City of Toronto’s City Planning division. In her current role she works with a team of housing experts to maintain the City’s supply of existing affordable rental housing and secure new affordable rental and ownership housing. Since 2016, she has been leading work on advancing inclusionary zoning, including supporting the City’s position on provincial legislation and proposing a local framework that responds to Toronto’s specific housing needs and market conditions.

Fei Li is an Assistant Professor at the Urban Studies Institute, Georgia State University (Atlanta). Her research interests involve transportation, housing, segregation, inequality, public health, and the social impacts of emerging technologies. Her current research focuses on 1) the integration of multimodal urban transport and smart technologies in promoting sustainable, safe and equitable mobility; 2) healthcare accessibility and the disparate impact of COVID-19; and 3) inclusionary housing policies. Fei holds a PhD in Public Administration from New York University and a bachelor’s degree from Peking University (China).

Jenny Schuetz is a senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. She is an expert in urban economics and housing policy, focusing particularly on housing affordability. Jenny has written extensively on land use regulation, housing prices, and neighbourhood change. She has served as a principal economist in the Federal Reserve System. She is a non-resident senior fellow at GWU’s Center for Washington Area Studies and teaches in Georgetown’s urban planning program. Jenny earned a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University, a Master’s in City Planning from M.I.T., and a B.A. from the University of Virginia.

Jeanhy Shim is the Founding President of Housing Lab Toronto – an independent real estate development consulting firm, and Founding Partner of PMA Sales Lab – a neighbourhood-focused housing advisory firm. For the past 28 years, she has provided strategic market analysis and development advisory services to developers and financial institutions in the Toronto region. Jeanhy serves on the Board of Directors at Waterfront Toronto, and is a founding Co-Chair of the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee at Urban Land Institute Toronto. She has a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a B.A. from McGill University.

Moderator

Susannah Bunce is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Geography and City Studies program at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Susannah’s research focuses on socio-environmental processes in urban neighbourhoods and community-based engagement. Her research on Community Land Trusts examines the provision of affordable housing, community decision-making, and collective practice. Susannah is also the co-lead, along with Dr. Alan Walks (Geography & Planning, UofT), of the Affordable Housing Challenge Project at the School of Cities, University of Toronto.

Description

You are invited to join a panel of practitioners and scholars to discuss recent and ongoing changes to the practice of diplomacy. Our panelists will address: the centralization of foreign policy in leaders’ offices; the evolving role of ambassadors and embassies; the rise of non-state actors; the advent of digital diplomacy. Following short presentations, we will have Q&A and general discussion.

Description

Abe Shinzo, who stepped down in September 2020 as the longest-serving Prime Minister in Japanese history, sought to fundamentally transform Japan’s foreign relations. What is his legacy, and where is Japanese foreign policy headed under Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide? This panel will draw on a recently published book co-edited by Takeo Hoshi (University of Tokyo) and Phillip Lipscy (University of Toronto), The Political Economy of the Abe Government and Abenomics Reforms. Welcoming chapter authors Adam Liff (Indiana University) and Mary M. McCarthy (Drake University), the panelists will discuss Japan’s diplomacy, security policy, approach to issues of historical memory, economic relations, and climate change policy.

Panelists:
Takeo Hoshi (University of Tokyo)
Adam Liff (Indiana University)
Phillip Lipscy (University of Toronto)
Mary M. McCarthy (Drake University)

The Political Economy of the Abe Government and Abenomics Reforms: This volume seeks to explain the political economy of the Abe government and the so-called ‘Abenomics’ economic policies. The Abe government represents a major turning point in postwar Japanese political economy. In 2019, Abe became the longest serving Prime Minister in Japanese history. Abe’s government stood out not only for its longevity, but also for its policies. Abe came to power promising to reinvigorate Japan’s economy under the banner of Abenomics. He pursued a host of structural reforms and industrial promotions to increase Japan’s potential growth rate. Abe also achieved important legislative victories in security policy. However, the government also faced significant controversies. The book will hold appeal for scholars and students specializing in the study of Japanese politics, comparative political economy, the politics of contemporary advanced democracies, macroeconomic policy, labor market reforms, corporate governance, gender equality, agricultural reforms, energy and climate change, and East Asian security.

Panelist Bios:

– Takeo Hoshi (University of Tokyo)
Takeo Hoshi is Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo. His research area includes corporate finance, banking, monetary policy and the Japanese economy. Hoshi is also Co-Chairman of the Academic Board of the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance (Tsinghua University). He received the 2015 Japanese Bankers Academic Research Promotion Foundation Award, the 2011 Reischauer International Education Award of Japan Society of San Diego and Tijuana, the 2006 Enjoji Jiro Memorial Prize of Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and the 2005 Japan Economic Association-Nakahara Prize. His book Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan: The Road to the Future (MIT Press, 2001) co-authored with Anil Kashyap received the Nikkei Award for the Best Economics Books. He co-authored The Japanese Economy (MIT Press, 2020) with Takatoshi Ito. Hoshi received his B.A. from the University of Tokyo and Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

– Adam Liff (Indiana University)
Adam P. LIFF is associate professor of East Asian international relations at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, where he also serves as founding director of its 21st Century Japan Politics & Society Initiative. His research focuses on international security affairs and the Asia-Pacific—especially Japanese and Chinese security policy; U.S. Asia-Pacific strategy; the U.S.-Japan alliance; and the rise of China. Beyond IU, Dr. Liff is a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Associate-in-Research at Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Politics from Princeton University, and a B.A. from Stanford University.

Phillip Lipscy (University of Toronto)
– Phillip Y. Lipscy is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He is also Chair in Japanese Politics and Global Affairs and the Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Japan at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. His research addresses substantive topics such as international cooperation, international organizations, the politics of energy and climate change, international relations of East Asia, and the politics of financial crises. He has also published extensively on Japanese politics and foreign policy. Lipscy’s book from Cambridge University Press, Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations, examines how countries seek greater international influence by reforming or creating international organizations.

Mary M. McCarthy (Drake University)
– Mary M. McCarthy is an associate professor of politics and international relations at Drake University. She specializes in Japan’s domestic and foreign policies, with a current focus on the legacies of the Asia-Pacific War on Japan’s foreign relations. She is editor of the Routledge Handbook of Japanese Foreign Policy (2018) and her most recent publications include “The Creation and Utilization of Opportunity Structures for Transnational Activism on WWII Sexual Slavery in Asia” in Jenny Wustenberg and Aline Sierp, ed. Agency in Transnational Memory Politics (Berghahn Books, 2020). Dr. McCarthy received her B.A. in East Asian studies and her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Description

Recent years have seen a rise in attention to Nippon Kaigi, or “Japan Conference,” an unincorporated lobby association that is credited with providing ideological motivation and legislative guidance to Japan’s top elected officials and other powerholders. The group serves as a meeting-point for religious organizations, ethics training groups, political reform associations, and others that diverge in terms of teachings and practices but cooperate in efforts to return Japan to the imagined glories of its imperial past. While much ink has been spilled on the group’s history and the influence of its prominent signatories, comparatively little attention has been paid to Nippon Kaigi’s ground-level operations. In this presentation, McLaughlin will draw on his ethnographic engagements with Shinto priests, members of ethics training seminars, and other Kaigi affiliates to create a complex picture of how the group manifests through local-level activities. By paying particular attention to gender roles, ritual practices, doctrinal instruction, and other factors that are often left out of estimations of Nippon Kaigi’s political impact, McLaughlin will demonstrate how a profile of the organization that gives precedence to the quotidian lives of its participants may reorient research on nationalism in Japan today.

Levi McLaughlin is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University. He is co-author of Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan (IEAS Berkeley, 2014) and author of Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan (University of Hawai`i Press, 2019).

Description

This is the second lecture in a two-part series, “The Political Life of Architecture.” The two parts can be viewed together or independently.

The first part of this series, on the IMEL/Biltmore Hotel in Tbilisi, is available on our YouTube channel (search: CERESMunk).

Just south of Skopje’s central square is one of the city’s most opulent neoclassical buildings, known locally as the “White Palace.” Contrary to first impressions, this building inspired by classical antiquity is not old, but was constructed in 2012 as the political headquarters of the VMRO-DPMNE party. In this second talk on the political life of architecture, Suzanne Harris-Brandts tells the story of how the White Palace came to take on its opulent form and the power and wealth that it has afforded the VMRO-DPMNE party along the way. She breaks down three interconnected scales at which power is expressed relative to the party headquarters: (1) the Architectural, foregrounding the White Palace’s design and construction; (2) the Urban, examining broader city building and real estate extortion practices in Skopje funding the party, and; (3) the Historical/Regional, looking at the irredentist, ethnonationalist narratives expressed through architectural symbolism, supporting the party ideologically. Built during VMRO-DPMNE’s time in office (2006-2016) and amidst its undertaking of the highly contentious ‘Skopje 2014’ urban renewal campaign, the White Palace exemplifies the interconnected nature of power and space in North Macedonia. The nuances of how different forms of authoritarian rule operate spatially through the city’s built landscape and how they result in distinct approaches to city building are thus epitomized in the project. This research is based on data collected through fieldwork in Skopje, including site observations, media analysis, personal interviews, and focus groups. It is part of a chapter in the forthcoming book ‘Spatializing Authoritarianism,’ edited by Natalie Koch and published by Syracuse University Press.

Dr. Suzanne Harris-Brandts is an Assistant Professor in the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, and a Faculty Associate with the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University. Her research brings together design and the social sciences to explore issues of power, equity, and collective identity in the built environment. Suzanne’s current book project, entitled ‘Constructing the Capital,’ draws from her dissertation uncovering the politics of urban development and image making in Eurasian capital cities. It examines city building campaigns in part-democratic/ part-authoritarian hybrid regimes, foregrounding the cases of Tbilisi, Georgia and Skopje, North Macedonia. The work demonstrates how architecture and urban design are manipulated for power retention in such regimes, while also highlighting bottom-up, community-based strategies to resist these actions. Suzanne received her PhD in Urban Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a licenced architect in Ontario and co-founder of Collective Domain, a design-research practice for spatial analysis, urban activism, architecture, and media in the public interest.

Videos of our public events are posted on our YouTube channel within approximately 10 days.

Description

The Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE) at York University and the Centre for the Study of Korea (CSK) at the University of Toronto are inviting you to the presentation by Prof. Sophia Seung-Yoon Lee (Chung-Ang University) on February 25, 2021 (Thursday), 4 to 5:30 pm (EST).   

Korea’s platform labor market expanded considerably in a short period of time and there is also a diversity of platform labor. The purpose of this talk is to understand the operation of the Korean platform labor market and how the forms for work mismatch with Korean social security system. The study categorizes platform companies and platform labor in the Korean platform labor market, and examines differences and commonalities in their labor processes through case studies on delivery platforms, domestic service platforms, and freelance platforms. The differences according to the type of platform labor are as follows. First, the delivery platform was mainly mediated by four-way relations, and the domestic services and freelance platforms by three-way relationships. Second, the intensity of labour control and involvement of platform labor of platform companies was strong in the order of delivery platform, house service platform and freelance platform. Third, the differences in social security experiences and needs were mainly found in industrial accident insurance. The analysis confirms that the mismatch between platform labor and social security system does not only come from the vague employment relationship of platform workers, but rather the differences among the types of platform work need to be considered in discussing social security reform to solve the mismatch problem.

Sophia Seung-Yoon Lee received her DPhil (PhD) in Social Policy from the University of Oxford (UK) with her thesis on A Comparative study of East Asian welfare states and nonstandard workers. Her research interests are East Asian welfare state and labour markets, precarious work, basic income and institutionalism. Some of her selected publications are “Institutional legacy of state corporatism in de-industrial labour markets: a comparative study of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Socio-economic Review (2016),” “Precarious Workers in South Korea, 한국의 불안정 노동자 Seoul: Humanitas, co-authored (2017),” “Precarious Elderly Workers in Post-Industrial South Korea, Journal of Contemporary Asia (2018).”  She was a member of the 4th National Pension Reform Committee of Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare and currently the vice chairperson of Youth Policy Coordination Committee of Rep. of Korea.   

This event is organized by Hae Yeon Choo (University of Toronto) and is presented by the Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE) at York University which is funded by the Academy of Korean Studies, and the Centre for the Study of Korea at the University of Toronto.  

For more information: kore@yorku.ca || https://kore.info.yorku.ca/calendar/

Description

The 15th annual Peace, Conflict and Justice Student Conference will unpack the global responses to and implications of COVID-19 through four interdisciplinary dimensions. The conference will feature a range of academics, professionals, and student speakers from the University of Toronto and the wider community.

The conference will kick off with a keynote address from Dr. Peter Singer, Special Advisor to the Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization.

More information about the four forums and speakers can be found below.

Keynote Address: 10:00 – 10:20
Dr. Peter Singer, Special Advisor to the Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization.

Forum #1: 10:20 – 11:20 – Policy Change and Management in a Globalized World
Dr. Joy Fitzgibbon, Director of the Margaret MacMillan Trinity One Program at Trinity College
Abdullah Fadil, UNICEF Sudan
Dr. Fiona Miller, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Second-Year PCJ Students, Nivaal and Maryam Rehman

Forum #2: 11:20 – 12:20 – Economic Implications
Dr. Wilson Prichard, International Centre for Tax and Development
Pedro Antunes, The Conference Board of Canada
Adam Zendel, UofT Department of Geography and Planning
Fourth-Year PCJ Student, Ally Johnston

Forum #3: 1:20 – 2:20 – Injustice and Instability in the Healthcare System
Dr. Anna Banerji, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Dr. Michael Widener, UofT Department of Geography and Planning
Dr. Asem Lashin, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and the Health Science Centre
Dr. Patrick Fafard, UOttawa Faculty of Public and International Affairs

Forum #4: 2:20 – 3:20 – Human and Social Response
Dr. Karen Naimer, Physicians for Human Rights
Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond, National Black Social Justice Coalition
Dr. Nicholas Spence, UofT Department of Sociology
Second-Year PCJ Student, Atharv Agrawal
Second-Year PCJ Student, Abhay Singh Sachal
Third-Year PCJ Student, Ruth Masuka
Third-Year UofT Student, Aishwarya Patel

Forum Descriptions

Instability and Injustice in the Healthcare System:

The Instability and Injustice in the Healthcare System Forum examines ways in which pre-existing inequities in the healthcare system have been exasperated by the pandemic. The forum takes up this issue by employing health geographies, addressing healthcare policies and possibilities, as well as speaking from frontline and firsthand experience. The goal of the forum is to demonstrate how minority groups, specifically Indigenous populations, have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic in terms of higher rates of pre-existing illness, as well as ongoing lack of access to healthcare infrastructure.

Economic Implications Forum:

The Economic Implications Forum focuses on how COVID-19 has impacted Canada financially. Our discussions will include the impact on Canadians individually, particularly on students and workers in precarious fields. Our speakers will also provide insight into Canada’s financial response to COVID, fiscal policy, and future trajectory of our economy.

Policy Change and Management in the Globalized World:

The Policy Change and Management in the Globalized World Forum covers a range of topics pertaining to how COVID-19 has impacted health and social policy in Canada and abroad. The forum explores how the pandemic has impacted access to education and the challenges that this has posed for policymakers. In addition, it analyzes the distribution of vaccines and testing materials in Canada and how this process will impact healthcare in the long-term. Finally, the forum discusses challenges in containing the spread of the virus, providing insight into how global solidarity can be built through healthcare and social policy.

Human and Social Response:

The Human and Social Response Forum focuses on student and social life and changes in the quality of life brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. It addresses student responses to the pandemic and how students have coped with change and uncertainty. The forum also examines local community and international responses and changes in social structure. Finally, the forum explores the development of a “new norm,” while considering the complexities of human behaviour.

Speaker Bios

Keynote: Dr. Peter Singer
Dr. Peter Singer is Special Advisor to the Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization. He supports the Director General to transform WHO into an Organization sharply focused on impact at the country level. Dr Singer co-chaired the transition team; was the architect of WHO’s strategy and its “triple billion” target; supports colleagues to guide consistent strategy implementation of WHO’s programme budget, results framework, delivery stock-takes, investment case, and innovation strategy; and provides leadership to the Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Wellbeing to strengthen collaboration among 13 multilateral agencies to accelerate the health-related Sustainable Development Goals.
Before joining WHO, Dr. Peter Singer co-founded two innovative, results driven, social impact organizations. From 2008-2018 Singer was Chief Executive Officer of Grand Challenges Canada. From 1996-2006 he was Sun Life Financial Chair and Director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. He is also Professor of Medicine at University of Toronto.
In 2007, Dr. Singer received the Michael Smith Prize as Canada’s Health Researcher of the Year in Population Health and Health Services. In 2011, Singer was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada for his contributions to health research and bioethics, and for his dedication to improving the health of people in developing countries. As a researcher, Dr. Singer published over 300 articles, received over $50 million in research grants, and mentored hundreds of students. He studied internal medicine at University of Toronto, medical ethics at University of Chicago, public health at Yale University, and management at Harvard Business School. He served his community as Board Chair of Branksome Hall, an internationally minded school for girls.

Injustice and Instability in the Healthcare System

1. Anna Banerji
Dr. Anna Banerji is a pediatric, infectious, tropical disease, and global health specialist. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She is the faculty lead for Indigenous and Refugee Health, as well as the creator of the Indigenous Health Conference at the University of Toronto. In 2012, she received the Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work in tracking respiratory syncytial virus across Northern Canada, noting specifically the virus’s disproportionate impacts on Inuit children.

2. Michael Widener
Dr. Michael Widener is a Canada Research Chair in Transportation and Health and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. He has a cross-appointment in Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He is a member of the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute where he serves as co-chair of the Health and Transportation subcommittee. Dr. Widener’s research examines themes of access to healthy food and healthcare facilities, as well as health and transportation geographies. His research interests also include GIS, agent-based modelling, and spatial optimization.

3. Asem Lashin
Dr. Asem Lashin is a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and an oncology-hematology specialist. He has been a front-line worker during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Health Science Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His work currently focuses on the neonatal intensive care unit as he completes his new subspecialty in neonatology. His insights will discuss the challenges of working with the most vulnerable groups of patients — premature babies — during the pandemic.

4. Patrick Fafard
Dr. Patrick Fafard is a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa in the Department of Social Sciences. He is an Associate Director at the University of Ottawa’s Global Strategies Lab and a member at the university’s Institute for Science, Society and Policy. He has served as the Director General in the Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat of the Privy Council Office and has held the role of Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Commission on Medicare, as well as the Executive Director of Policy and Planning in the Saskatchewan Department of Health. His research interests include public health policy, the social determinants of health, health services, global health, and ethics and health.

Economic Implications

1. Adam Zendel
Mr. Adam Zendel is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Geography and Planning Department and a researcher for the Cultural Economy Lab. Mr. Zendel’s doctoral research explores elements of labour geographies pertaining to touring musicians and crew members. He is currently working on an article exploring the impacts of COVID-19 on the live music industry, with a focus on the experiences of musicians and crew members. He will be sharing his findings during our panel, along with knowledge on other issues COVID-19 is posing on cities and workers more broadly.

2. Pedro Antunes
Mr. Pedro Antunes is the Chief Economist and primary spokesperson at The Conference Board of Canada. Mr. Antunes provides expert testimony before parliamentary and senate committees. He has contributed notable research on the impact of Canada’s demographic change on labour markets, the fiscal sustainability of health care, productivity, and long-term economic growth. He will be joining our panel to provide insight on Canadian fiscal policy and long-term responses to COVID-19. Mr. Antunes’ work can be accessed at the Conference Board of Canada’s research database.

3. Wilson Prichard
Dr. Wilson Prichard is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, the Chief Executive Officer of International Center for Tax and Development, and an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the Department of Political Science. His research and expertise notably address the question of taxation and development, including government revenues, state-building and accountability, and the political foundations of development. Dr. Prichard will be joining our panel to speak on how Canada might pay for the response to COVID-19, guided by the stronger-than-ever argument for expanding taxation for the wealthiest sectors of our economy. His insights will focus on possible policy responses.

4. PCJ Student, Ally Johnston
Ally Johnston is a fourth-year Peace, Conflict and Justice student at the University of Toronto. She has been a member of the G7 Research Group for three years, researching and analyzing compliance. In 2020, Ally participated in a study exchange program at Sciences Po, where she studied economics. This past summer, she also worked at a data consulting firm. During the panel, Ally will be discussing the Canada Emergency Response Benefit program.

Policy Change and Management in a Globalized World

1. Abdullah Fadil
Mr. Abdullah Fadil is currently a UNICEF Representative in Sudan. He has been the Director for the United Nations Monitoring Mechanism for Syria and the Deputy Head of Mission and Chief of Staff for the Joint Mission in Syria. Mr. Fadil has also served as the Chief of Human Resources Officer, Head of Office, and Chief Mission Support in the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization. He has over twenty years of expertise in addressing disputes related to political analysis, diplomacy, strategic planning, and conflict resolution in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His focus is on the complexity of peacekeeping, peace-building and conflict and post-conflict countries.

2. Fiona Miller
Dr. Fiona Miller is a Professor of Health Policy and the Chair in Health Management Strategies at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. She is affiliated with the University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics, the Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment, the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation’s Committee on the Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability, and the Sustainable Built Environment Performance Assessment Network. Her current research interests examine the development of health technologies and their adoption, with a specific focus on the role of institutions.

3. Dr. Joy Fitzgibbon
Dr. Fitzgibbon is Associate Director and Assistant Professor in the Margaret MacMillan Trinity One Program. She is a Fellow of Trinity College and a Senior Fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History. Joy’s research focuses on solutions to governance dilemmas in global health pandemics, including COVID-19, and on violence against women in conflict zones. She has served as a governance and policy advisor on the board of Food for the Hungry Canada, lectured in the International Paediatric Emergency Medicine Elective and in the Canadian Disaster and Humanitarian Response Training Program and submitted policy reports to the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament and the then Canadian International Development Agency.

4. PCJ Students, Maryam and Nivaal Rehman
Maryam and Nivaal Rehman are twin activists and co-founders of The World With MNR, a non-profit organization that takes action for climate justice, gender equality, and inclusivity. In 2019, they released a documentary on girls’ education in Pakistan and screened it globally and at the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative’s 20th anniversary celebrations. They have conducted interviews with Malala Yousufzai, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, and the President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde. For their activism, they have received the Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award, now the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers.

Human and Social Response

1. Karen Naimer
Ms. Karen Naimer is currently the Director of Programs for the not-for-profit non-governmental organization, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). In this role, Ms. Naimer oversees all activities within PHR’s program division. Her oversight includes research, investigations, asylum, capacity development, and advocacy-related projects. She also supervises initiatives ranging from PHR’s U.S. Asylum Network to international programs focusing on documenting and responding to sexual violence in conflict zones and mass killings.

2. Nicholas Spence
Dr. Nicholas Spence is a member of the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Center for Health and Society at the University of Toronto. Dr. Spence’s research focuses on social inequality and the multiple determinants of health and well-being. He is affiliated with the Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations and Health Disparities. He also serves as the Associate Director of the Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium and Senior Editor of the International Indigenous Policy Journal.

3. Kia Darling-Hammond
Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond is the Director of Education Programs and Research for the National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization dedicated to the empowerment of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and same gender loving people. She has distinguished herself as a thought leader and collaborator in the worlds of youth service, education, mental health, well-being, and social justice research, with more than twenty years of experience as an administrator, researcher, teacher, and mentor. Dr. Darling-Hammond’s scholarship explores the possibilities for thriving among young adults who experience complex marginalization.

4. Abhay Singh Sachal
Abhayjeet (Abhay) Singh Sachal is a humanitarian, environmentalist, and activist. After a trip to the Arctic in 2016, Abhay co-founded Break The Divide Foundation, a non-profit organization that connects youth around the world with one another. Based on principles of environmentalism, sustainability, and reconciliation, Break The Divide focuses on fostering empathy and understanding to inspire action projects in communities. Abhay was recently named one of Canada’s Top 25 Under 25 Environmentalists and featured as one of 10 International Youth Changemakers in Canada.

5. Atharv Agrawal
Atharv Agrawal is a socioeconomic empowerment and inclusion activist and Lester B. Pearson International Scholar. He has worked as a student consultant at IBM Canada’s Pro Bono Initiative, where he engaged with local non-profits to tackle business challenges. Currently, Atharv is a member of Global Spark, a nationwide non-profit, where he is spearheading their podcast entitled CC: World; a student researcher at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy; and an executive member of the Hart House Debates and Dialogue Committee.

6. Aishwarya (Arya) Patel
Aishwarya is an incoming third-year student at the University of Toronto pursuing a Bachelor of Music in Comprehensive Studies as a pianist and composer, a minor in Political Science, and two certificates in Health Applications in Music and Music Technology. Throughout the summer of 2020, Aishwarya interviewed students, designed the layout, and created illustrations for the COVID-19 Perspectives book, a project sponsored through the University of Toronto’s 2020 COVID-19 Student Engagement Award. The powerful cadences of personal growth that Aishwarya has gained from her experiences living in Zimbabwe, Canada, and the United States have resonated with her and cultivated the roots of her desire to give back to the community.

7. Ruth Masuka
Ruth Masuka is a third-year Peace, Conflict and Justice student at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses centre around art as a bottom-up peacebuilding mechanism. She studies the ways in which non-institutional community spaces and informal activities act as catalysts for civil enfranchisement.

Description

Greece (and other southern European countries) have experienced in the early 2010s an unprecedented economic and financial crisis which has led many people to emigrate. Those leaving were generally highly educated and they mainly headed towards EU countries as they had the right to free movement as EU citizens. Our research results though suggested that while important, economic reasons were far from being the exclusive, or even the predominant driver of highly skilled emigration from Greece. The desire to improve one’s training and career perspective, to increase employability and derive individual satisfaction from occupation, was mentioned by more than half of our respondents in a survey conducted in 2013 in all southern European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece). The strongest emigration potential was to be found among those who were dissatisfied with the quality of life and their job prospects at the home country, and who refuses to renounce what they thought they could/should achieve in terms of life style and overall satisfaction. These findings will be the starting point of a reflection on what shapes highly skilled emigration from Greece today. Perhaps the lessons learnt from the financial and Eurozone crisis of the early 2010s can serve as a compass for navigating the post-pandemic downturn and recovery.

Anna Triandafyllidou holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Ryerson University in Toronto. She is an internationally recognized sociologist and migration policy expert whose interdisciplinary research focuses on the governance of migration and asylum; the management of cultural diversity, nationalism and identity issues; and overall, the contemporary challenges of migration and integration across different world regions. Prior to her CERC at Ryerson University, Triandafyllidou was based in Florence, Italy, where she held a Robert Schuman Chair at the European University Institute and directed the Cultural Pluralism Research Area as part of the European University Institute’s Global Governance Programme.

Description

ASIA-PACIFIC CONVERSATIONS  

In recent years, researchers have highlighted the importance of using “Asia” as a site to develop new research tools and methods to rethink the global world. The outbreak of Covid-19, in many ways, has only heightened this call. Beyond the Asian stories of  “failures” and “successes” in dealing with the ongoing public health crisis, the pandemic has exacerbated the existing geopolitical tensions, dispossession, as well as state violence against minorities and political dissidents, all against the backdrop of a series of ever-growing planetary crises.   With the pandemic still evolving, how should specialists of Asia begin to examine their “field” when the field itself is mutating, and when there is no clear sense of how to go about documenting and knowing the unknown? In this conversation, distinguished Asia scholars working from a variety of interdisciplinary contexts, including anthropology, cultural studies, history, and media studies, will reflect on the challenges of conducting research into the unknown in a politicized, racialized, sensationalized, and emotion-laden environment.

Panelists’ Bios:

MICHAEL BERRY is a translator and author who is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies and Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA. He has written and edited eight books on Chinese literature and cinema, including Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (2006) and A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008). He has served as a film consultant and a juror for numerous film festivals, including the Golden Horse (Taiwan) and the Fresh Wave (Hong Kong). A two time National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, Berry’s book-length translations include The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai (2008) by Wang Anyi, shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, To Live (2004) by Yu Hua, a selection in the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read library, and Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City (2020) by Fang Fang.   

BISHNUPRIYA GHOSH is Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she teaches environmental media and global postcolonial studies. Much of her early scholarly work interrogated the relations between the global and the postcolonial; area studies and transnational cultural studies; popular, mass, and elite cultures. Apart from works that address global mediascapes, in the last decade, Ghosh turned to risk distributions and their relationship to media. She has written several essays on the subject and has co-edited collection (with Bhaskar Sarkar), The Routledge Companion to Media and Risk (2020). She is completing a single-authored , The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media which considers how mediatic processes detect and compose epidemics as crises events.   

RALPH LITZINGER is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. He is the author of Other Chinas: the Yao and the Politics of National Belonging (Duke University Press, 2000), and, more recently, with Carlos Rojas, Ghost Protocol: Development and Displacement in Global China (Duke University Press, 2016). He has published in leading cultural anthropology and Asian studies journals. He directed Duke’s Asia/Pacific Studies Institute from 2001-2007, and the Duke Engage Migrant Education Project from 2008-2015. His new research concerns questions of planetary futures, digital labor and platform capitalism, human and post-human techno-imaginaries. His most recent publication, with Fan Yang, is “Eco-Media Events in China: From Yellow Eco-Peril to Media Materialism,” Environmental Humanities, May 2020.

Description

The Centre for the Study of Global Japan will be welcoming Prof. Hiroko Akiyama to present her research on the ageing society. Prof. Akiyama will be joined by Prof. Margarita Estevez-Abe and Prof. Michelle Silver for discussions following the presentation. This webinar will be moderated by Prof. Ito Peng.

Presenter:
Hiroko Akiyama
Visiting Professor, Institute of Gerontology and Institute for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo
Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo

Hiroko Akiyama, a gerontologist, is professor of emeritus at the University of Tokyo and the former vice president of Science Council of Japan.　Professor Akiyama has conducted a number of cross-national surveys and is widely recognized as an expert on issues of global aging. She is known for the long-running research on the elderly in Japan—tracking the aging patterns of approximately 6,000 Japanese elderly over 30 years. She also initiated social experiment projects that pioneer to re-design communities to meet the needs of the highly aged society, and more recently Kamakura Living Lab, a platform for open innovation by co-creation among users, industry, government and academia. She started the Institute of Gerontology at University of Tokyo in 2006. Professor Akiyama received Ph.D. in psychology from University of Illinois, the United States.

Panelists:
Margarita Estevez-Abe
Associate Professor, Political Science, Syracuse University

Margarita Estevez-Abe teaches political science at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She works in the sub-field of political science called comparative political economy of advanced industrial countries. She is interested in how political and economic institutions are constructed differently across countries and in their varying effects on politics and ordinary people’s lives. Her work so far has dealt with Japanese political economy, the Varieties of Capitalism, and comparative political economy of gender.

Michelle Silver
Acting Chair, Department of Health and Society and Associate Professor, University of Toronto Scarborough

Michelle Silver is an Associate Professor of Gerontology at the University of Toronto where she holds appointments in the Department of Health and Society, Sociology, and Public Health. Her book, Retirement and Its Discontents, was published in 2018 by Columbia University Press. Her work has been featured in Forbes, the Times Literary Supplement, Zoomer, Next Avenue, The Globe and Mail, Global News, and other popular media sources. She received a BA, BS, and MPP from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD from the University of Chicago. She is currently chair of the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Ito Peng
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Social Policy and Director, Centre for Global Social Policy, Department of Sociology, and Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto (Moderator)

Professor Ito Peng is a Canada Research Chair in Global Social Policy at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto. She is an expert in global social policy, specializing in gender, migration and care policies. She has written extensively on social policies and political economy of care in Asia Pacific. Her teaching and research focus on comparative social policy, and family, gender, employment and migration policies. She just completed an international partnership research project entitled Gender, Migration, and the Work of Care (http://cgsp.ca/), and is now engaged in two research projects: The Care Economy: Gender-sensitive Macroeconomic Models for Policy Analysis, and Care Economies in Context: Towards Sustainable Social and Economic Development.

Description

The Graham Centre presents a discussion of The Art of Sharing: The Richer versus the Poorer Provinces since Confederation, by Toronto-based journalist and historian Mary Janigan. This book studies the history of Canada’s path toward Equalization, with comparisons between Canadian and Australian approaches.

Description

2021 Bissell-Heyd Public Research Event:
“Racisms in the United States”

Event Info:
Perhaps in more pertinent ways than any other time in recent memory, the power of globalization and how it intersects with race is at full display. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that what happens in a faraway land does not stop at its borders but can produce domino effects, forceful enough to lock down almost the entire world. Immigrants, long been singled-out as disease carriers, have once again been blamed for the world’s pandemics. The coronavirus originating in China, this time xenophobia has turned its gaze on immigrants of Asian descent. At the same time, the world is witnessing massive protests against anti-Black racism in the U.S. echo across countries as far-flung as Canada, France, Great Britain, India and Ethiopia, showing that such domino effects are not just produced as a result of once-in- a-lifetime epidemiological crises but also because of sociopolitical dynamics that have long percolated in our societies. These events highlight how the age-old colour line that still divides an “us” from a “them” are challenging America’s identity as a nation.

This webinar series hosts a panel of distinguished scholars to situate the ongoing conversations on race, migration, and nationalism in today’s global context to discuss how racisms—such as, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant sentiments, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialisms—all work together to produce systemic racial disparities in the United States and abroad. The event is open for free to the public. Please register to receive a Zoom link for each session.

Session 1 Theme: Racisms in the United States

Title of Presentation: “The Indian Question in the United States”

Abstract:
Making the radical argument that the nation-state was born of colonialism, this talk calls us to rethink political violence and reimagine political community beyond majorities and minorities. Dr. Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe—from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan—the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority. The model emerged in North America, where genocide and internment on reservations created both a permanent native underclass and the physical and ideological spaces in which new immigrant identities crystallized as a settler nation. In Europe, this template would be used by the Nazis to address the Jewish Question, and after the fall of the Third Reich, by the Allies to redraw the boundaries of Eastern Europe’s nation-states, cleansing them of their minorities. After Nuremberg the template was used to preserve the idea of the Jews as a separate nation. By establishing Israel through the minoritization of Palestinian Arabs, Zionist settlers followed the North American example. The result has been another cycle of violence.

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1974 and specializes in the study of African history and politics. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, and the history and theory of human rights. He has authored several ground-breaking books including Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror, and Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror. His new book, from Harvard University Press, is titled Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities.

Description

Why has Japan’s immigration policy remained so restrictive, especially in light of economic, demographic, and international political forces that are pushing Japan to admit more immigrants? Michael Strausz will answer this question by drawing on insights from nearly two years of intensive field research in Japan. In addition to answering this question by outlining the central argument of his 2019 book, Help (Not) Wanted: Immigration Politics in Japan, this presentation provide context to recent developments in Japanese immigration policy – particularly the December 2018 decision to admit more than 300,000 low skilled foreign laborers as well as the immigration policy response to the COVID pandemic.

Speaker Bio:
Michael Strausz is an Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of Asian Studies at Texas Christian University. He earned his PhD from the University of Washington. He is currently editing a collection of essays by an interdisciplinary group of scholars tentatively titled _The Past and Future of Immigration in Japan_ which aims to put recent immigration reforms into context. His book _Help (Not) Wanted: Immigration Politics in Japan_ was published in 2019 with SUNY Press.

Description

The year 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of Taiwan’s introduction of degree-pursuing Mainland Chinese students (lusheng) to its higher education institutions. However, this landmark moment also witnesses the demise of lusheng policies across the Taiwan Strait. China’s Ministry of Education has suspended lusheng enrollment in Taiwanese colleges beginning this fall. How might we address the shifting political economy which shapes and contests lusheng policies? How have the lived experiences of lusheng brought new meanings to the geopolitical terrains under which these policies came into being? In what ways have the recent COVID-19 pandemic intensified the political and personal conundrums facing lusheng? This film screening and Q&A event seeks to understand the mounting geopolitical tension between Taiwan and China by directing focus on the stories of lusheng in Taiwan.  

Discussant’s bio:

Michelle Cho is an assistant professor of East Asian Popular Cultures in the Department of East Asian Studies, and graduate faculty in Cinema Studies, University of Toronto. Her research interests include East Asian cinema, television, video, and pop music, genre cinemas, social media platforms, and Korean-wave pop culture fandoms.  

FILM SYNOPSIS:  Our Youth In Taiwan (dir. Fu Yue) is a story of resistance, collaboration, and frustration between three protagonists: Cai Boyi, a politically engaged mainland Chinese student in Taiwan; Chen Wei-ting, a student leader of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement; and Fu Yue, the documentary filmmaker. As their interwoven narratives unfold, the meanings of democracy, national belonging, social movement, political engagement, sexuality, and even filmmaking are called into question.   

The film won the Best Documentary at the 2018 Taipei Golden Horse Awards. In her award acceptance speech, director Fu Yue advocated for the recognition of Taiwan as an “independent entity.”   

Based in the Global Taiwan Studies Program at the Asian Institute, University of Toronto, The Taiwan Gazette is a student-run online platform that aims to introduce Chinese-language sources about Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China to a wider readership across the English-speaking world. It also features Taiwan-related student research and introduces scholarly works which approach Taiwan in critical perspectives and methods.

FILM SCREENING: March 8 (12 pm) to March 14 (11:59 pm EST)  

***To receive the link for the film screening, please register on the Eventbrite below***

Description

On Friday, March 12th, 2021 from 5 – 6:30 PM EST the Munk School will be hosting an online panel event in the spirit of the International Women Day celebration. The event is titled “Women Breaking Ceilings”. The panel will be composed of high-ranking women in government and in the private sector that will shed light on how they overcame barriers to access and navigate professional spaces often deemed inaccessible to many women. Moreover, this event aims to showcase trailblazing women in our economy and government to hopefully inspire and encourage women at the Munk School and beyond.

Bios:

Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard

Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard is the first African Nova Scotian woman to be appointed to the Senate of Canada, representing the province of Nova Scotia and her hometown of East Preston. Senator Bernard champions issues impacting African Canadians and people living with disabilities. She is particularly invested in human rights, employment equity, and mental health. Through her involvement in community projects, her social work career, her time with Dalhousie School of Social Work, and now her work in the Senate and as Deputy Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, Senator Bernard has maintained a deep dedication to social justice and racial justice. Senator Bernard advocates for reparations for the historic and continued anti-Black racism impacting the lives of African Canadians in her work.

Dr. Sarah Saska

Dr. Sarah Saska (She, Her, Hers) is the Co-founder and CEO of Feminuity, a global strategy firm that partners with leading technology startups through Fortune 500 companies to build diverse teams, equitable systems, and inclusive products and company cultures. Before co-founding Feminuity, Sarah led pioneering doctoral research at the intersection of equity, technology, and innovation. Her research highlighted the need for companies in the technology and innovation sector to centre ethical and equitable design and became the inspiration for Feminuity. Since then, Sarah has twice been named amongst the Women’s Executive Network’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada and on Culture Amp’s list of “Diversity and Inclusion Leaders You Should Know.” She is a powerful TEDx speaker, and she has been featured on CBC’s The National and Fast Company for her straightforward and actionable approach to the work.

Sylvia Parris-Drummond

Sylvia Parris-Drummond is the CEO of the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute. Her work in education and the community is rooted in core Africentric Principles. She has a successful history of collaboration with the communities and stakeholders with whom she has worked. Through her extensive public sector involvement, Ms. Parris-Drummond has gained a deep understanding and appreciation for what it takes to conduct policy analysis, oversee publishing projects, and develop and implement education product and develop anti-racism and social equity transformation programs. Known for getting things done in a thoughtful, respectful and engaging way, she has been actively involved across a broad range of community initiatives and organizations such as Akoma Family Centre and Holdings, FEEDNS, the NS Early Childhood Intervention Services, the Black Business Initiative Community Investment Fund and the NS Mass Choir. She has worked for both municipal (Halifax Regional Municipality) and provincial governments (Departments of Education and Justice) as well as the Nova Scotia Community College. Sylvia is proud that during her time at provincial government she founded and was supported by sistahs to develop the African Canadian Women in the Public Service (ACWPS). Ms. Parris-Drummond holds a Masters of Arts in Life Long Learning – Africentricity, a Masters of Education – Curriculum, and a Bachelor of Science, Home Economics / Education.

An-Noûra Compaoré

An-Noûra Compaoré is passionate about changes and movements focused on long-term development, auto-sufficiency of developing nations, women equality. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of British Columbia (UBC). Upon her arrival in Vancouver from Burkina Faso, she introduced innovative foreign policy ideas, development analysis plans, and arts. Her passion for developing countries led her to present her research about the effects of foreign aid and foreign direct investments on corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa. This earned her the UBC Undergraduate Research Award. Compaoré is currently pursuing her Master of Public Policy at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She is one of the co-founders and co-president of the Munk School Black Student Association. She was a pro-bono consultant at the Public Good Initiative and Equity Diversity Public Policy Initiative. Her love for women uplifting led her to organize one of the first International Women Day celebrations at UBC and International Women Day inspired panel event at the Munk School.

Description

Over the past 20 years, Japan’s leading companies have seen their former competitiveness in the mass-manufacturing of high-quality consumer products competed away, first by Korea and Taiwan, and the China. A complete pivot has become necessary to compete not through size and output volume of consumer gadgets, but nimble specialization and technology leadership in input components. The goal is to anchor Asian supply chains and stay ahead of China by occupying critical deep-tech niches. As Japanese companies have gone on a refocusing diet, they have attracted foreign capital and reorganized internal processes of innovation. This conversation will lay out these changes and show why we should pay attention to what they mean for global business and politics.

Speaker Bio:
Ulrike Schaede is Professor of Japanese Business at the University of California, San Diego, School of Global Policy and Strategy. She is the Director of JFIT (Japan Forum for Innovation and Technology) where she organizes a weekly “Japan Zoominar” on current issues on Japan. Schaede works on Japan’s changing corporate strategies, including business culture, change management, employment practices, the rise of private equity, corporate governance, and manufacturing and innovation under the digital transformation. She has written extensively on Japanese business organization, and is the author of The Business Reinvention of Japan: How to Make Sense of the New Japan (Stanford University Press, 2020) as well as Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century (Cornell UP, 2008). She holds a PhD in Japan Studies and Economics from Marburg University, Germany, and has been invited to visiting professor and scholar positions at UC Berkeley, Harvard Business School, Stanford University in the U.S., as well as Hitotsubashi University and the research institutes of The Bank of Japan, various Ministries, and the Development Bank of Japan. All told, Schaede has spent over nine years of research in Tokyo and is an advisor to two startup incubators in Japan. See more at www.TheJapanologist.com.

Description

The Graham Centre is pleased to sponsor a virtual launch of The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider’s Guide to Changing the World, by Severine Autesserre, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University. This book takes the reader behind the scenes of contemporary peacebuilding efforts and has been praised by Nobel Laureates and the editor of Foreign Affairs.

Description

2021 Bissell-Heyd Public Research Event:
“Racisms in the United States”

Event Info:
Perhaps in more pertinent ways than any other time in recent memory, the power of globalization and how it intersects with race is at full display. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that what happens in a faraway land does not stop at its borders but can produce domino effects, forceful enough to lock down almost the entire world. Immigrants, long been singled-out as disease carriers, have once again been blamed for the world’s pandemics. The coronavirus originating in China, this time xenophobia has turned its gaze on immigrants of Asian descent. At the same time, the world is witnessing massive protests against anti-Black racism in the U.S. echo across countries as far-flung as Canada, France, Great Britain, India and Ethiopia, showing that such domino effects are not just produced as a result of once-in- a-lifetime epidemiological crises but also because of sociopolitical dynamics that have long percolated in our societies. These events highlight how the age-old colour line that still divides an “us” from a “them” are challenging America’s identity as a nation.

This webinar series hosts a panel of distinguished scholars to situate the ongoing conversations on race, migration, and nationalism in today’s global context to discuss how racisms—such as, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant sentiments, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialisms—all work together to produce systemic racial disparities in the United States and abroad. The event is open for free to the public. Please register to receive a Zoom link for each session.

Session 2 Theme: Racisms in Public Health: What Pandemics Teach About Racial Disparities

Title of Presentation: “Indigenous and Communities of Color Survival in Los Angeles in the Times of a Global Pandemic and in the Wake of Ongoing Racial Violence”

Abstract:
In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has made the disproportionate outcomes of health isparities among Indigenous and communities of color clear. To be Indigenous, Black, and Latinx marks you for death twice as much than that of whites. In Los Angeles County, one of the most populated counties in the US, it has now been ten months since city officials first declared quarantine on March 29, 2020. Nine months have passed since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. We have witnessed how people themselves have re-organized, strategized, copped, and suffered loved ones losses at an incredible rate never seen in recent times. The lack of affordable healthcare and cultural awareness of medical professionals, especially towards Indigenous Oaxacans, puts them at a higher risk of exposure, contracting, re-occurance, or dying from COVID at an alarming scale. Making matters worse, on Christmas Day, South LA and its major hospital were declared “on the edge of catastrophe” as it streams with patients (New York Times 2020). How is one of the most populated neighborhoods, in the most populous states, where Indigenous, Black, and Latina/os together make up an overwhelming 95% facing the challenges? This talk considers how Indigenous and communities of color, have been affected by the pandemic, and how they have collectively responded to each other when the US settler state continues to fail them.

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Brenda Nicolas (Zapotec) received her PhD in Chicana/o and Central American Studies from UCLA. Her work looks at the transborder communal experiences of Zapotec diasporas in Los Angeles. Specifically, she looks at women’s and adult children of migrants’ participation in community sociocultural and political organizing to contest settler colonial logics of Indigenous erasure. Dr. Nicolas is the recipient of several fellowships. She was born and raised in Los Angeles. Her book project is titled Transborder Comunalidad: Gendering Practices of Belonging and Identity Across Settler Colonial Borders.

Description

The Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History and Massey College present:

An Oxford Union-style Debate

“Be it Resolved That Canada should sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”

For the Affirmative: Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

For the Negative: Robert Baines, President and CEO, NATO Association of Canada

Moderator: The Hon. Bill Graham, Chancellor, Trinity College

Audience Members will vote on the Resolution at the Start and again at the End of the Debate.

Submit questions at events.munk@utoronto.ca

Description

In a democracy numbers matter. Demography may not be destiny but it shapes political power in the way that water shapes rock. Put simply, when populations change, power changes hands. This lecture is about how shrinking ethnic and racial majorities in Western democracies are trying to adjust to a future in which their declining numbers threaten their majority status. It’s not about how people elect their governments, but rather how different governments select their people. This occurs by re-designing citizenship criteria and electoral law, by crafting new immigration regimes, by employing practices like gerrymandering and voter suppression, and by changing national narratives. The central argument is that today’s clash between liberalism and illiberalism is at root a contest between two contrasting ideals of the “people”. Liberalism is a vote for an inclusive body politic, representing the diversity of modern society, in which the only majority that matters is the one born on election day. Illiberalism, by contrast, is a belief that the political and national community should be aligned. It’s an effort to try and preserve the indigenous character of national democracies at a time of dramatic change in ethnic, racial or generational composition.

Short bio: Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustees of The International Crisis Group and is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is the author of “Is it Tomorrow, Yet? How the Pandemic Changes Europe” ( Penguin, 2020); The Light that Failed: A Reckoning (Allen Lane, 2019), co-authored with Stephen Holmes – won the 30th Annual Lionel Gelber Prize; “After Europe” (UPenn Press, 2017); “Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest” (UPenn Press, 2014) and “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders?” (TED Books, 2013). Ivan Krastev is the winner of the Jean Améry Prize for European Essay Writing 2020.

Description

2021 Bissell-Heyd Public Research Event:
“Racisms in the United States”

Event Info:
Perhaps in more pertinent ways than any other time in recent memory, the power of globalization and how it intersects with race is at full display. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that what happens in a faraway land does not stop at its borders but can produce domino effects, forceful enough to lock down almost the entire world. Immigrants, long been singled-out as disease carriers, have once again been blamed for the world’s pandemics. The coronavirus originating in China, this time xenophobia has turned its gaze on immigrants of Asian descent. At the same time, the world is witnessing massive protests against anti-Black racism in the U.S. echo across countries as far-flung as Canada, France, Great Britain, India and Ethiopia, showing that such domino effects are not just produced as a result of once-in- a-lifetime epidemiological crises but also because of sociopolitical dynamics that have long percolated in our societies. These events highlight how the age-old colour line that still divides an “us” from a “them” are challenging America’s identity as a nation.

This webinar series hosts a panel of distinguished scholars to situate the ongoing conversations on race, migration, and nationalism in today’s global context to discuss how racisms—such as, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant sentiments, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialisms—all work together to produce systemic racial disparities in the United States and abroad. The event is open for free to the public. Please register to receive a Zoom link for each session.

Session 3 Theme: How Racisms Work Together in the United States and Abroad

Title of Presentation: “The Interconnected Histories of South African and American Sociology: Knowledge in the Service of Colonial Violence”

Abstract:
South African sociology is a colonial discipline. As such, it was not born out of a desire to add to the general store of knowledge about human nature and social relations. Rather, its raison d’être was to produce knowledge in the service of apartheid. Therefore, the matrix of ideas and understandings that coalesced around the concept of ‘culture’ in South African sociology cannot readily be separated from the issue of cultural violence. Indeed, to review the history of South African sociology is to review the history of an idea—culture—deployed in the service of colonial violence. But where did the ideas about culture that were so central to the apartheid episteme come from? The genealogical exploration of South African sociology I undertake below argues that the ideas about culture that were the bedrock of the South African apartheid policy of ‘separate development’ took the shape that they did because of the strength of the connection between ‘scientific sociology’ in South Africa and the apartheid regime. South African sociology was not, however, a sui generis phenomenon. As an imperial episteme it traced its roots and borrowed many of its concepts about culture from American sociology,
which was, itself, a product of American slavery. The goal of this essay, therefore, is to explain how the concept of ‘cultural difference’ in American sociology, which evolved out of the practical needs of transforming industrial and agrarian labor relations in the period following emancipation, captured the hearts and minds of the first generation of South African sociologists.

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Zine Magubane received her PhD from Harvard University. Her work has dealt with two major geographic areas of the world, the United States and Southern Africa. Her choice of research topics reflects a deliberate effort to make an innovative contribution in the following four sociological sub-fields: the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of culture, social stratification, and historical sociology. In addition to several influential books and articles, she is the author of Bringing the Empire Home: Race, Class, and Gender in Britain and Colonial South Africa, which explores colonial conceptions of blackness across England and South Africa and how these representations continue to influence ideas of race, gender, and class today.

Description

Transcendence has been largely mobilized in formulating a modern nation-state in Korea. In this talk the presenter looks into how religion is constructed in relation with the development of secular modernity in Korea from a perspective of circulatory history. The category of religion appeared in Korea in processes through which East Asia was incorporated into the globalized modern world. Unlike those in China and Japan, a considerable portion of Korea’s enlightenment elites and major nationalists recalled spiritual societies to the making of the Korean nation in the globalized East. Such formation of religion in modern Korea was greatly attributed to the colonial and postcolonial politics of the secular nation-building. Rather than condemned as a symbol of feudalism, irrationality and imperialism, religion was largely thought of as an alternative venue of communication for resisting colonialism, contributing to national enlightenment as well as overcoming the nation’s geopolitical limit in the Far East.

Dr. Kyuhoon Cho is a research associate in the Centre for the Study of Korea at the University of Toronto. Previously he taught at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul National University and Nanyang Technological University. His research and teaching focus on Korean religions and heritage in the context of globalization.

Description

How is digital entrepreneurship, led by start-up companies and backed by venture capital, transforming the Greek economy? How might this movement be expanded to better enable Greece to improve its economic prospects? What steps might be taken to limit the social costs of disruption and enhance its benefits?

Stergios Anastasiadis was born in Canada to Greek immigrant parents, finished his secondary school education (Lyceum) in Greece, and returned to Canada to complete degrees at the University of Toronto and McGill University. He has worked in the technology space for more than thirty years, building teams and creating and scaling products. Most recently he has focused his energies in the start-up space, drawing on experience at Google, Good Technology, and Shopify. Stergios has worked with product development, user experience, design and data teams throughout his career. As an engineer he has enjoyed building systems in consumer and enterprise spaces and, most recently, in the area of big data and machine learning. Anastasiadis has made a conscious effort to invest in Greek start-ups through local venture capital funds. He has reviewed more than 50 Greek start-up pitches and formed relationships with innovative and dynamic entrepreneurs. His focus in on deepTech, cleanTech, agriTech and shippingTech, four areas of significant relevancy to Greece. Stergios is committed to mentoring members of the Greek tech community and has developed two of his own start-up companies. He is bullish about the Greek technology and start-up ecosystem and committed to returning to Greece on a full-time basis.

Steve Vranakis is an award winning creative who has worked on the launch of the iPhone and Amazon in the UK, with NASA (Space Lab), and the United Nations UNICEF). He led the Creative Lab at Google in EMEA for over 8 years. Vranakis was appointed as the first ever Chief Creative Officer for Greece in 2019, to develop a new country narrative as a Special Advisor to the Prime Minister. To help the Tourism Industry cope with the effects of the Covid-19 crisis, he launched #GreeceFromHome, an initiative developed and deployed in two weeks. Some of his past projects include: a machine learning musical instrument called the NSynth Super, the Assembly of Youth (an installation giving youth a voice at the United Nations), and Inside Abbey Road – a virtual tour of the iconic music studios. You can view some of those projects here: https://youtu.be/MeHdXaSNaRU. Steve also worked on the launch of project Bloks, a physical coding platform that teaches kids to code for which he was granted two Google patents. In 2015 Vranakis went to the island of Lesvos to build a mobile information site (refugee.info) to help Syrian refugees fleeing civil war. Steve’s work has earned many international awards and has been featured in WIRED, The New York Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Creative Review, Huffington Post, FT, Design Week, and Adage. He’s written columns for Adweek, Marketing, and Campaign, and conducted interviews with the BBC, CNN, and CNBC. Steve serves as an advisor to one of the world’s hottest fashion technology start-ups, unmade.com, as well as SUPERPERSONAL, an AI company using advanced visual personalisation technology. In 2017 he was president of D&AD where he made it his mission to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds get into the creative industries.

Description

Discourses are essential arenas where policy-making occurs. Analysis of parliamentary debates on material need assistance reveals how governing societies through security, biologisation, the normalisation of self-responsibility, and through moral claims, redefines relationships in the society, leads to restrictive control oriented measures, resulting in symbolic and social exclusion that deepens inequalities and solidifies the institutional racism against the Roma in Slovakia.

Lenka Kissová, PhD is a junior researcher at the Institute for Research in Inclusive Education at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. She received her doctoral degree in Sociology from Masaryk University, Her professional interests include migration, minorities, political discourses, securitisation, social justice, and human rights. She has been a member of many local, national or international research projects., she was a visiting student at the University of Bologna and at the University of Toronto.

Description

“The Political Life of Information” series at the Asian Institute brings together scholars, activists, artists, and other practitioners to reflect on practices of surveillance, data visualization, population management and identification, news and journalism, and the social aspects of algorithms from a perspective based in Asia, but speaking to a broad audience interested in the political ramifications of media and information technology.

This, our second event will focus on the edited volume, Lives of Data, edited by Sandeep Mertia, a groundbreaking new study mapping the historical and emergent dynamics of big data, computing, and society in India. Data infrastructures are now more global than ever before. In much of the world, new sociotechnical possibilities of big data and artificial intelligence are unfolding under the long shadows cast by infra/structural inequalities, colonialism, modernization, and national sovereignty. This book offers critical vantage points for looking at big data and its shadows, as they play out in uneven encounters of machinic and cultural relationalities of data in India’s socio-politically disparate and diverse contexts.   Lives of Data emerged from research projects and workshops at the Sarai programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. It brings together fifteen interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners to set up a collaborative research agenda on computational cultures. The essays offer wide-ranging analyses of media and techno-scientific trajectories of data analytics, disruptive formations of digital economy, and the grounded practices of data-driven governance in India. Encompassing history, anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), media studies, civic technology, data science, digital humanities, and journalism, the essays open up possibilities for a truly situated global and sociotechnically specific understanding of the many lives of data.    

*** Link to the Lives of Data volume, published in the "Theory on Demand" series by the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam:  https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/lives-of-data-essays-on-computational-cultures-from-india/

SANDEEP MERTIA is a PhD candidate at the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and Urban Doctoral Fellow at New York University. He is an ICT engineer by training, and former Research Associate at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.  

TONG LAM is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto and a visual artist. He is the author of A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900–1949 (University of California Press, 2011), Abandoned Futures: A Journey to the Posthuman World (Carpet Bombing Culture, 2013), and the co-editor (with Jahnavi Phalkey) of the inaugural special issue of BJHS Themes: Sciences of Giants: China and India in the Twentieth Century (2016). His current research focuses on information, infrastructure, special zones, and borders in socialist and postsocialist China. His ongoing research-based visual projects examine contemporary China’s breakneck transformation, as well as the material evidence of Cold War mobilizations globally and their environmental and social consequences. He has exhibited his photographic and video works internationally.   

SARAH SHARMA is Director of the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto and Associate Professor of Media Theory at the ICCIT. Her research and teaching focuses on the relationship between technology, time, and labour with a specific focus on the politics of gender and race. She is the author of In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics (Duke UP, 2014). Sarah is currently at work on a new book on technology and feminism tentatively titled Broken Machine Feminism. Next year Duke University Press will publish her co-edited collection MsUnderstanding Media: A Feminist Medium is the Message (with Rianka Singh). She has also published articles in such venues as Cultural Studies, The Boston Review, Feminist Media Studies, Canadian Journal of Communication, Communication and Critical Cultural Studies, and Transfers: Journal of Mobility Studies.  

MARIANA VALVERDE is a noted sociolegal scholar who has worked on diverse issues and topics over the years, but has recently focused attention on ‘smart city’ initiatives, mainly in Canada but also elsewhere including India. Her most recent book is the co-edited collection Smart Cities in Canada: Digital Dreams, Corporate Designs (2020)

Description

Following the Syrian refugee program, the Government of Canada led a major effort to internationalize private refugee sponsorship through the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative. Four years later, what have we learned about this effort to export and internationalize aspects of Canada’s program? Panelists will draw from their chapters in the recently-published volume, Strangers to Neighbours: Refugee Sponsorship in Context (MQUP 2020).

Moderator:
Geoffrey Cameron is research associate at the Global Migration Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. He has a PhD from the University of Toronto, where he was a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, and an MPhil from the University of Oxford. His forthcoming book is Send Them Here: Religion and Refugee Resettlement in North America (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), and he is co-editor of Strangers to Neighbours: Refugee Sponsorship in Context (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020)

Panelists:
Megan Bradley is associate professor of political science and international development studies at McGill University. Her research and teaching focus on refugees, human rights, humanitarianism, transitional justice, natural disasters, and gender. She serves as Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of International Development, and Associate Director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies. She also coordinates the McGill Refugee Research Group. She is the author of Refugee Repatriation: Justice, Responsibility and Redress (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The International Organization for Migration: Commitments, Challenges, Complexities (Routledge, 2020).

Craig Damian Smith is senior research associate at the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration at Ryerson University. He was previously Associate Director of the Global Migration Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, and he is a Research Affiliate at York’s Centre for Refugee Studies. He is also the founder of Pairity, a data-driven platform to facilitate community-based refugee integration.

Shauna Labman is an associate professor of human rights in the Global College at the University of Winnipeg. She co-founded the Migration Law Research Cluster at the University of Manitoba and was a consultant for the Law Commission of Canada, the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi. She is the author of Crossing Law’s Border: Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program (UBC Press, 2020), and co-editor of Strangers to Neighbours: Refugee Sponsorship in Context (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020)

Description

Women have been historically restricted from upward mobility in American animation studios, but the increasingly fragmented and decentralized landscape of animation production in the 1970s-80s made space for a burgeoning community of independent women animators. How did their creative work flourish in these decades, at a time when the animation industry itself was facing an uncertain future? In pursuing this question, this talk brings together a feminist history of animation production in the 1970s-80s and the history of social reproduction theory in these same decades, in order to understand independent animation in the context of an increasingly precarious and feminized post-Fordist creative economy. Building a composite portrait anchored by autobiographical films of fours artists (Suzan Pitt, Jane Aaron, Sally Cruikshank, and Candy Kugel), I propose the figure of the “homeworker” as a model for self-employed artists maintaining their practice under conditions of economic, social, and spatial precarity, often within their own home. Conceived as an alternative to the independent or freelance artist, the homeworker allows us to understand creative labour in a post-Fordist economy as pervasively feminized labour, increasingly extended to all artists. Looking closely at the work of women animators who navigated this economy at its nascency allows us to understand its complexity and speculate about tactics of its survival.

Author Bio:
Dr. Alla Gadassik is assistant professor of Media History and Theory at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Her research bridges the disciplines of cinema studies, history of technology, and genealogies of media practice. Particular areas of interest include the history of cinematography, film editing, and animation methods, as they transformed across different disciplines invested in rendering movement. She is currently working on a SSHRC-funded research project on eco-materialist approaches to animation.

Description

-DESCRIPTION : Le pasteur Pierre du Moulin (1568-1658) est l’une des grandes figures de la communauté protestante française de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Premier pasteur du temple de Charenton à quelques lieues de Paris, il est bien connu pour ses écrits théologiques et ses controverses avec le clergé catholique. Mais du Moulin a également rédigé ses Mémoires dans lesquels sont consignés les évènements plus personnels de sa longue existence marquée par les guerres de Religion (1562-1598) et les relations très tendues entre les réformés et le pouvoir royal durant le règne de Louis XIII (1610-1643). En s’appuyant sur une version restée manuscrite des Mémoires de du Moulin, cette présentation analysera la thématique du voyage et s’interrogera sur ses significations. La vie de Pierre du Moulin se caractérise par de nombreux déplacements, voulus et contraints, tant en France qu’à l’étranger (Sedan, Angleterre, Provinces-Unies), et ce pasteur incarne à la fois la France huguenote et le Refuge huguenot. Cette présentation montrera en outre que les imaginaires liés au voyage doivent être pris en compte, dans la mesure où ces Mémoires visent à délivrer un message religieux à ses lecteurs.

-BIOGRAPHIE : Marie-Clarté Lagrée est agrégée d’histoire et docteur en histoire moderne de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, et elle a publié sa thèse sous le titre : « C’est moy que je peins ». Figures de soi à l’automne de la Renaissance (PUPS, 2012). Elle est spécialisée en histoire culturelle de la France des XVIe-XVIIe siècles, et privilégie une approche enrichie par l’apport des autres sciences sociales. Ses recherches actuelles et ses dernières publications portent sur les thématiques du corps et du voyage, et elle travaille en ce moment sur le pasteur Pierre du Moulin (1568-1658).

Description

Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay’s Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy.

Join us on April 13, as Jon Lindsay sits down to discuss his new book with Brian Cantwell Smith, the Reid Hoffman Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Human at the Faculty of Information Studies and Ron Deibert, Professor and Director of Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

Information Technology and Military Power is available from Cornell University Press. Attendees may use the following promotional code to receive a 30% discount: 09FLYER

Description

In his book, In the Dragon’s Shadow, The Diplomat editor Sebastian Strangio talks about the challenges for Southeast Asia in managing the rise of China. Do Japan’s longstanding ties to the region—including as its largest infrastructure investor– stand it in good stead to provide a counterweight to China? And what can Canada learn from Japan in its approach to this important region? Join Strangio and a panel of international experts to discuss the roles of Japan, Canada, the USA and China in Southeast Asia.

Speaker Bios:
Sebastian Strangio is Southeast Asia Editor at The Diplomat. In 2008, he began his career as a reporter at The Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia, and has since traveled and reported extensively across Southeast Asia, paying special attention to the impact of China’s growing power. Sebastian’s writing has appeared in leading publications including Foreign Affairs, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He is also the author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia (Yale, 2014), a path-breaking examination of Cambodia since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century (Yale, 2020).
*More information: http://www.sebastianstrangio.com

Nobuhiro Aizawa is Associate Professor of Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University. He is the author of ‘Beyond the Non-Interference Dilemma: The Indonesian Initiative on ASEAN Charter, Nargis Crisis and Regionalism’, Australian Journal of Politics and History: Volume 65, Number 3, 2019. The Ethnic Chinese and the State: Indonesia’s China/Chinese Problem (in Japanese) (Shoseki Kobo- Hayama, 2010). He has been a Wilson Center Japan Scholar, a Visiting Scholar at Thammasat University, Chulalongkorn University and Cornell University. He is a former Research Associate at the Institution of Development Economies-JETRO, National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies and a member of Project 2045: A Joint Project of Two Maritime Democracies Indonesia-Japan.

Stewart Beck is the President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. Prior to joining APF Canada, Mr. Beck served as the Canadian High Commissioner to the Republic of India with concurrent accreditation to the Kingdom of Bhutan and to Nepal. He joined Canada’s Department of External Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada) in 1982 and served abroad in the United States, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China. In Ottawa, he held a number of progressively more senior positions, including Director General of the North Asia Bureau, Director General Responsible for Senior Management and Rotational Assignments, and Assistant Deputy Minister for International Business Development, Investment, and Innovation. He was Consul General in Shanghai and prior to his posting to India, he was Consul General in San Francisco.

Elina Noor is Director, Political-Security Affairs and Deputy Director, Washington, D.C. Office at the Asia Society Policy Institute. A native of Malaysia, Elina’s work focuses on security developments in Southeast Asia, global governance and technology, and preventing/countering violent extremism. Previously, Elina was Associate Professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. Prior to that, she was Director, Foreign Policy and Security Studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia. While there, she also served as the Secretary of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, a 21-member Track Two regional security network. Between 2017 and 2019, Elina was a member of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace. She is also on the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs’ roster of experts, supporting efforts to build member states’ cyber-related capacity.
*More information: https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/elina-noor

Deanna Horton is Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. As part of her Canadian foreign service career, Deanna Horton spent a total of twelve years in Japan, including as Deputy Head of Mission, and also served as Ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. She was a NAFTA negotiator, followed by two postings in Washington, most recently as Minister (Congressional, Public and Intergovernmental Affairs). As a Munk School Senior Fellow she has led a digital mapping project on Canada’s footprint in Asia (https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/canasiafootprint/) and related research on Canadian technology multinationals. Ms. Horton is also affiliated with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, and the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, commenting on economic and trade policy issues with a focus on Asia.

Description

The Belt and Road in Global Perspective project is delighted to welcome Laleh Khalili (Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary U of London), who will discuss her book “Sinews of War and Trade Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula” with Joseph McQuade (Richard Charles Lee Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy)

On the map of global trade, China is now the factory of the world. A parade of ships full of raw commodities—iron ore, coal, oil—arrive in its ports, and fleets of container ships leave with manufactured goods in all directions. The oil that fuels China’s manufacturing comes primarily from the Arabian peninsula. Much of the material shipped from China are transported through the ports of Arabian peninsula, Dubai’s Jabal Ali port foremost among them. China’s “maritime silk road” flanks the peninsula on all sides.

Sinews of War and Trade is the story of what the making of new ports and shipping infrastructure has meant not only for the Arabian peninsula itself, but for the region and the world beyond. The book is an account of how maritime transportation is not simply an enabling companion of trade, but central to the very fabric of global capitalism. The ports that serve maritime trade, logistics, and hydrocarbon transport create racialised hierarchies of labour, engineer the lived environment, aid the accumulation of capital regionally and globally, and carry forward colonial regimes of profit, law and administration.

Laleh Khalili is a professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London and the author of Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The politics of national commemoration (Cambridge 2007), Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Stanford 2013) and Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso 2020).

Joseph McQuade is the Richard Charles Lee Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies. He is also Editor-in-Chief at the NATO Association of Canada and Digital Content Manager for the Munk School’s Belt and Road in Global Perspective research initiative.

Description

For the last few decades, the dominant growth model has been to focus on technological innovation. Yet, while a small number of cities and regions have benefited, many other communities have struggled. In his latest book, Innovation in Real Places: Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, Dan Breznitz sets out to challenge this model and sets out how these communities might succeed. He argues that by understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, cities and regions can foster surprising forms of specialized innovation.

On April 21, join us as Dan Breznitz sits down to discuss his new book with Ludwig Siegele, US Technology Editor at The Economist.

Innovation in Real Places is currently available as an ebook and will be available at local bookstores, as well as from Indigo and Amazon, on April 17. You can find links to purchase at Oxford University Press.

Description

The first ever graduate symposium in contemporary South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto was conceived of as a platform for students engaging in critical research connected to South Asia. As the pandemic disrupts our societies, it serves as a stark reminder of the importance of social relations and the need to transform the “normal.” Presenters in the conference draw our attention to a range of lenses to observe and imagine possibilities within history, religion, politics and technology. We invite students, faculty, professionals, and practitioners of South Asian Studies from across geographies to engage with and learn about emerging research in the field. We are immensely proud of the team at South Asian Studies that brought this event together and we wish all of our brilliant participants good luck with their presentations and academic journeys.

Asmita Bhutani, PhD student, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Centre for South Asian Studies
Sarah Alam, PhD student, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and Centre for South Asian Studies
(Co-Chairs of the CSAS Graduate Symposium 2021)

***Follow the link below to view the Symposium Program***

PLEASE NOTE: The registration for the Keynote Address is conducted separately from the registration for the CSAS Graduate Symposium. Follow the link below to register for the Keynote Address via Zoom and register for the Symposium via Eventbrite OR copy/paste the URLs below in your web browser:

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Description

Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke University Press, 2021) examines the afterlife of the Vietnam War, and its continued impact on our understanding of race and beauty. Framing skin as the site around which these ideas have been formed, materially and metaphorically, the book considers the work of wartime scientists in the U.S. Military Dermatology Research Program, who attempted to alleviate the environmental and chemical risks to soldiers’ bodies, while helping to shore up the widespread use of these same chemicals, alongside the labors of women in contemporary Vietnam, who continue to struggle to remediate war’s biochemical effects. By foregrounding the histories of US militarism, biomedical investigations, chemical warfare, consumer culture and the bodies of U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers, prisoners, and civilians who have been the subjects of research and remediation, Experiments in Skin advances a transpacific theory of aesthetics and politics critical to our understanding of colonial modernity and the lives lived in its shadows.

Speaker Bios:

Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, Associate Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU (presenter)
Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. She is the author of Experiments in Skin and of The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion (Duke UP, 2011), and co-editor of the anthologies Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia, Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, and Technicolor: Race and Technology in Everyday Life. At NYU, she currently serves as the faculty coordinator for the Prison Education Program’s multi-year collaborative research project on “Debt and Incarceration” (https://wp.nyu.edu/nyu_debt_project/).

Matthew Farish, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Undergraduate, Department of Geography and Planning, U of T (panelist)
Matthew Farish is Associate Professor of Geography and Associate Chair, Undergraduate at the University of Toronto. He teaches courses in cultural and historical geography, and studies the militarization of the planet by the United States during the middle decades of the twentieth century. He is finally nearing completion of a co-authored history of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, and is drawing together a collection of essays on US military climate laboratories, survival schools, and proving grounds.

Edward Jones-Imhotep, Associate Professor and Director, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, U of T (panelist)
Edward Jones-Imhotep is a historian of the social and cultural life of machines. He received his PhD in History of Science from Harvard University and is Director of the University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST). He is a co-founder of Toronto’s TechnoScience Salon, a public forum for humanities-based discussions about science and technology. His research deals with topics ranging from the history of music studios and artificial life to space technologies and the technological geographies of islands. But his work is particularly interested in histories of technological failure — breakdowns, malfunctions, accidents — and what they reveal about the place of machines and the stakes of machine failures in the culture, politics, and economics of modern societies. His book, The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War (MIT Press), won the Sidney Edelstein Prize. His current book project, Unreliable Humans/Fallible Machines, examines how people from the late-18th to the mid-20th centuries understood machine failures as a problem of the self — a problem of the kinds of people that failing machines created, or threatened, or presupposed.

Elizabeth Wijaya, Assistant Professor, Department of Visual Studies, Graduate Faculty, Cinema Studies Institute and Director, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, U of T (panelist)
Elizabeth Wijaya is an Assistant Professor of East Asian Cinema in the Department of Visual Studies and a Graduate Faculty at the Cinema Studies Institute and the Director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. She was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota (Twin Cities). She is a co-founder of E&W Films and an Associate Producer of Taste (dir. Le Bao, Special Jury Prize, Berlinale 2021).

Description

The Bill Graham Centre presents: A Conversation with Bob Rae

Join Canada’s Ambassador to the UN to discuss events in Myanmar and other global hotspots.

Appointed in 2020 as the Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae has had an extensive career in politics. He served as Premier of Ontario in 1990, interim leader of the federal Liberal Party in 2011, and as Canada’s Special Envoy on Humanitarian and Refugee Issues (then called the Special Envoy to Myanmar) in 2017.

Description

Long before COVID-19 choked off flights, the planet was suffocating from the rise of mass tourism and the decline of travel. Post-pandemic, we need a new way to visit ancient relics and living cultures without crowding ourselves out. A look at the economics and sociology of mass tourism and alternative travel — scalability, sustainability and diminishing returns.

About our Speaker

Martin Regg Cohn is a political columnist for the Toronto Star. A foreign correspondent for 11 years, he ran the Star’s Middle East and Asia bureaus, reporting from more than 40 countries — from Afghanistan to Yemen. He was later Foreign Editor and a world affairs columnist. Nominated five times for the National Newspaper Award, he also received an Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada fellowship to research Islam in Indonesia, and won the Amnesty International Media Award for his coverage from Sudan.

A Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, he is also a Visiting Practitioner in the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University, and delivered lectures for New York Times Journeys on trips to Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.

Description

The lecture will provide an overview of Hungarian policies directed at leaving the Axis camp during the Second World War. After an introductory part on the general political and military situation of the country, the lecture will concentrate on the main goals of the Hungarian government in 1943 and the efficiency of various peace-feelers in the neutral capitals of Europe, primarily Bern Stockholm and Turkey, showing events from the perspective of the Hungarian side. The lecture will place Hungary into the general context of allies’ aims and war efforts, with a special focus on the geopolitical significance of Southeast Europe in the war. The lecture will draw the attention of the audience to the significance of secret peace-talks with the allied side while giving an insight into the related intelligence maneuvers and their impact on Hungary shortly before the German occupation.

András Joó (VERITAS Institute, Budapest) obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Economics and Public Administration (now known as Corvinus University, Budapest) in 2001. His main area of research is the 20th century diplomatic history with a special focus on World War II. Dr. Joo is the author of a monograph on Hungarian foreign policy during World War II (Kállay Miklós külpolitikája: Magyarország és a háborús diplomácia 1942-1944. The Foreign Policy of Miklós Kállay: Hungary and Wartime Diplomacy 1942-1944. Napvilág Kiadó, Budapest, 2008). Dr. Joo joined the VERITAS Research Institute in 2015, where he has continued his research on the history of Hungary during World War II collecting and editing sources that have survived in the private hands yet not been discovered by the general public. He regularly publishes the results of his research in Hungarian.