Erin Tolley
Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Toronto Mississauga
Biography
Erin Tolley is Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She is motivated by questions about democratic inclusion and equality, and her research focuses on the impact of socio-demographic diversity on Canadian politics and political institutions. She is the author of Framed: Media and the Coverage of Race in Canadian Politics. It received the 2017 Donald Smiley Prize, which recognizes the best book in Canadian government and politics. She is the editor of five books on immigration and multiculturalism and has published more than two dozen articles and chapters.
Dr. Tolley’s current work takes place in four research streams (1) the political representation of women and minorities (2) race, gender and elections (3) media, diversity and politics, and (4) diversity in the political science discipline. Dr. Tolley’s work is multi-method, and she is particularly drawn toward research that requires the construction and analysis of original datasets, including the compilation of comprehensive data on more than 4,000 electoral candidates, mining 50 years of programs from the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, sifting through thousands of news articles, or conducting more than 100 elite interviews.
Originally from Saskatchewan, Dr. Tolley earned her Ph.D. from Queen’s University where she was a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar and SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholar. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, she was a researcher and policy analyst in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.