Ethnographic Research and T-Shirts in Shanghai
In May 2015, I spent a month in Shanghai and, like many westerners, smiled at the many examples of poor English I saw in stores, government buildings and well, on t-shirts. Ethnography is the study of culture and people and the products they produce. One of the first things ethnographers do is catalogue and…
Government advertising and accountability
Recently, The Globe and Mail reported that Pierre Poilievre’s department paid civil servants overtime to produce feel-good ads about the Universal Child Care Benefit. The problem with this ad, like all the federal ads, is that they are beyond the scrutiny of parliament and therefore citizens. These youtube ads have rightly raised the ire of many…
Visiting Professor at the Seaker Chan Center for Comparative Political Development
I am pleased to be the Seaker Chan Visiting Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai for May 2015. While here I will be giving lectures on Canadian politics and deliberative democracy. I will also be travelling to Chengdu to participate in a conference on local politics.
The Crick Centre & the Value of a Public Conversation
I just contributed a piece on citizens’ assemblies to the Crick Centre at the University of Sheffield in the UK. Its aim is to “study and promote the public understanding of politics” and to bridge the chasm between academics and non-academics. It’s no surprise, then that the subtitle of the Centre is “Understanding Politics” I’ve always…
What the HLTH 102 controversy says about university teaching
The tempest that is HLTH102 taught at Queen’s University raises many questions about university teaching but also larger questions about structural problems that are not being addressed in media that I have read. These structural issues suggest that the problem is not isolated to this one professor but perhaps a product of the way we do university teaching. HLTH…
Letters of Reference
For years, like my other faculty colleagues,I have had many requests for letters of reference. Most of the time they are for some post-secondary education like grad school, law school or college. I’m not sure if students have a sense of what is required for a letter of reference. Some take a long time to…
Discussing Citizens’ Assemblies in Chicago
I am looking forward to meeting with the Joyce Foundation in Chicago on January 21-22 to discuss the feasibility of citizens’ assemblies on issues such as the election of governor, (s)election of judges and re-districting. Several American states, like Ohio, have commissions devoted to modernizing the state constitution. Citizens’ assemblies, followed by a referendum, may be an…
Creating Social Capital one book at a time….
Some time ago, my family and I discussed doing a little social experiment. What would happen if, on our front garden, we had a small box filled with books that people could take and replace? We had heard about little free libraries from several sources but wondered if books or the library would be defaced…
Course outlines posted
Over the coming weeks, I will try to post my course outlines. You can find them by clicking on the Teaching tab above.
This site is a work in progress
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