Cultural Labour: Researchers

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Principal Investigator

Catherine Murray (political science)
Catherine Murray is Professor in the School of Communication, Co-Director of the Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities and an associate of the Masters’ of Public Policy Program at Simon Fraser University. She came to SFU in 1992 after a position as Vice President, Media and Telecommunications at Decima Research, Toronto. Dr. Murray is a co-author of Creative Spaces (forthcoming: Sage), From Economy to Ecology: A Policy Framework for Creative Labour (2008), Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Media in BC (2007), Researching Audiences (2003), “BC’s Place Based Approach: Policy Devolution and Cultural Self-Determination” in Cultural Policy and Cultural Public Administration in Provincial and Territorial Governments in Canada (Forthcoming) and over 60 publications. She has served on nine not-for-profit Boards in the cultural sector, and was a Member of the Minister of Canadian Heritage’s Expert Advisory Council on the Instrument for Cultural Diversity. She is currently a member of the International Advisory Board of the Cultures and Globalization Series for Sage Publishers, which continues UNESCO’s World Cultures Reports (for further information, see website).

Associate Researchers

Caroline Andrew (political science)
Caroline Andrew is the Director of the Centre on Governance, School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her areas of research interest include municipal social policy, urban development and the relationships between community based groups and municipal governments, particularly in the areas of immigrant integration, women’s urban safety and the creation of inclusive communities. See website.

Alison Beale (communication)
Associate Director of the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University since 2009 and Co-Director of the Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities since 2007, Dr. Beale is best known for her contribution to feminist analyses of cultural policy (editor of the Special issue on Cultural Policy in Feminist Media Studies in 2007 and Ghosts in the Machine (1998). Her documentary on Harold Adams Innis (1990) remains one of the few bilingual resources on Innis in the country, and a remarkable contribution to economic history in Canada, and lent her an abiding interest in marginal women and men in communication theory. See website.

Alexandra Boutros
Alexandra Boutros is an assistant professor in communication and cultural studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her work is generally concerned with the intersection of media, technology and identity within the context of social, cultural and religious movements. A manuscript under consideration, Visible Vodou: Travel, Transcendence and Technology in a Diasporic Religion, combines ethnographic and material cultural analysis in a study of Haitian Vodou in North America. Visible Vodou explores the intersection of diasporic Haitian Vodou practices, technology and representations of Vodou in popular culture. Other areas of research include work on Afrofuturism, ubiquitous computing, and urbanism. As a researcher with the (SSHRC MCRI) Culture of Cities Project, Alexandra is co-editor, with Will Straw, of Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture. Recent publications have appeared in the Canadian Journal of Communication and Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and Its Diasporas, and essays are forthcoming in two anthologies focusing on religion and media (Deus in Machine: Religion and Technology in Cross Cultural Perspective, Fordham and Religion, Media, Globalization, Routledge). See website.

Stuart Cunningham (communication)
Director of Australia’s first Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation since 2005, and Distinguished Professor at Queensland University of Technology, Dr Cunningham has conducted a wide range of international and comparative empirical studies on cluster mapping, value chain analysis, creative digital industries, and screen policy. He is best known for his defense of cultural policy in cultural studies (2003), his interest in dynamic adjustment of regulatory principles in new diasporic cultural forms, and most recently was the guest editor of The Cultural Economy, part of the culture and globalization series (Sage 2008). His recent work on embedded cultural workers — that is, artists who work outside of conventional arts and cultural sectors — goes to the heart of the process of innovation, productivity and understanding "precarious labour" in the creative economy. See website.

Lon Dubinsky (communication)
Lon Dubinsky holds appointments at Concordia University and the University of Ottawa. He is also a Research Associate of the Canadian Museums Association and the Kamloops Art Gallery. He was Co-Director of the Cultural Future of Small Cities CURA. His research interests include community-museums collaborations and the social organization of the visual arts. See website.

Nancy Duxbury (communication)
Dr. Duxbury is an adjunct professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and past Executive Director of the Project on the State of Cultural Infrastructure in Canada conducted through the Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities. She has worked as a municipal cultural planning analyst for the City of Vancouver for eight years, was editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication for ten years, and served as director of research at the Creative City Network of Canada between 2003 and 2006. She has published extensively on the topic of community indicator projects, municipal diversity initiatives and most recently was the lead editor of Under Construction: The State of Cultural Infrastructure in Canada (Infrastructure Canada, 2008). She is best known for her ability to develop networks and adapt and disseminate information among researchers with affinity for specific knowledge clusters.

Marla Waltman Daschko
Marla Waltman Daschko, owner of Waltman Research, a Toronto-based consultancy, specializes in research for the culture sector. Marla brings experience as a culture policy advisor, researcher and research manager to her practice. This experience was gained from employment at Statistics Canada, the Department of Canadian Heritage, Library and Archives Canada, and Human Resources Development Canada. Since 2000, her work has focused on data development to support analysis of the supply and demand for Canadian culture products. She has experience in designing and working with culture data sources and their use to promote policy and program design. Currently, Marla is revising the Canadian Framework for Culture Statistics, the basis for all culture data and analysis produced by Statistics Canada. Previous work as a consultant has related to planning for a Canadian culture satellite account, and research into the state of data on Canada’s cultural infrastructure.

Graeme Evans (urban planning)
Canada does not have a direct equivalent to Dr. Evans’ Cities Institute at the London Metropolitan University, and it is an absence that is sorely missed. A full professor since 2003, Graeme Evans’ professional training crosses arts management and urban planning. He has published extensively on cultural mapping and sustainable communities, branding of the cultural city, and compared cultural industry quarters around the world. He has two articles on creative spaces and the art of urban living forthcoming in Vernacular Creativity and Urban Studies in 2009. Professor Evans is due to complete the sustainable cities project in Canada with a visit to Montreal in the Spring of 2009. His book on culture and sustainability is forthcoming in 2010. See website.

Monica Gattinger (public policy)
Professor Gattinger is associate professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, and associate of the Centre for Governance, after working as a consultant to Telus Corporation and analyst in the Industry Canada policy services branch. She won the Graduate Student Canadian Policy Research Award in 2000 and is a co-applicant in an international research collaboration on subnational cultural policy models, and frequent researcher on multilevel governance. She has co-authored Power Switch: Energy Regulatory Governance in the 21st Century (2003) and Accounting for Culture (2005). An article on comparative cultural policy analysis apepars in the Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society (Winter 2009). Dr. Gattinger is past Co-ordinator of the Public Administration Program (2005-2007) and special adviser on research to the Canadian Conference of the Arts. See website.

Eric Gedajlovic
Eric Gedajlovic is an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Business Administration where he holds a joint appointment in the Strategy and Innovation and Entrepreneurship areas. Prof. Gedajlovic's research focuses on entrepreneurship and the comparative analysis of governance systems and their influence upon the development of organisational capabilities, social wealth and national competitiveness. Eric's research has been published in most of the top ranked Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Business Venturing and Organization Studies. Eric's research has been widely cited by other scholars (over 850 citations on Google Scholar as of July 2009). His research has also been referenced and summarized in graduate and undergraduate level text books in the fields of Strategic Management and Industrial economics. Eric currently sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Studies, Asia Pacific Journal of Management and Family Business Review. He has also guest edited special issues of the Journal of Management Studies on family business enterprise and the Asia Pacific Journal of Management on varieties of Asian capitalism. See website.

Paula Hamilton (history)
An Associate Professor of the Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney, Dr. Hamilton has co-authored Oral History and Public Memories (2008), Memory and History in 20th century Australia (2004) and is a collaborator on the international people and their pasts project. She has founded the Public History Review, and has been a member of the Australian Journal of History and Culture since 2003. Dr. Hamilton’s forthcoming book History at the Crossroads: Australians and their Past reports on the first ARC funded linkage project which conducted a national survey on attitudes towards the past in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Tranby Aboriginal College, the Powerhouse Museum and the History Teachers’ Association.

John Hannigan (sociology)
A professor at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, John Hannigan specializes in urban sociology culture and urban development and creative economy theory. His text Environmental Sociology (Routledge, 2006) is in its second edition, and his seminal Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern City (1998) was the first Canadian intervention into the global cities debate. He has been a member of the national advisory group on the CPCC’s study on the state of Canadian cultural infrastructure, and has been a member of the editorial board of the Sociology Compass, and guest editor of a themed issue of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research on the entertainment economy and urban place-building. See website.

David Hesmondhalgh (media studies)
Dr. Hesmondalgh is professor at Leeds Metropolitan University and director of the Center for Media Industries Research (CuMirc). He has led a major ESRC team studying creative work in the cultural industries, and his book The Cultural Industries is in the second edition with Sage. He has more than five other co-edited books, and extensive articles exploring the structural transformation of the music industries, production of celebrity, and critical theory on music and youth culture. A forthcoming monograph with Sarah Baker on creative work in music TV and magazine journalism will advance understanding of the changing nature of creative work. Dr. Hesmondalgh is on the International Advisory boards of Popular Music, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and the Chinese Journal of Communication, among others. See website.

Tom Hutton (geography)
Dr. Hutton’s seminal “New Economy of the Inner City” in Cities:21 ranked the highest of its year among Elsevier articles for web-access. A professor of the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Hutton has co authored Service Industries and Asia-Pacific Cities: New Development Trajectories (2005) and The New Economy of the Inner City: Restructuring, Regeneration and Dislocation in the 21st Century Metropolis (2008). He is a member of the MCRI on Multilevel Policy in Canada (SSHRC-sponsored) and worked on the social dynamics of industrial creation and innovation with the ISRN (Innovation Studies Research Network).

Yudhishthir Raj Isar (sociology and cultural anthropology)
Jean Monnet Professor of global communication at the American University of Paris, Dr. Isar is co-editor of the Culture and Globalization Series (Sage), including Cultural Economy (2008) and Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation (2009). He has been principal planner of the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development (Stockholm, 30 March – 2 April 1998) and for the design and implementation of follow-up to the report of the World Commission on Culture and Development at UNESCO. He is president of the European Forum for Arts and Heritage and has served as Special Expert Advisor to the National Task Force set up by the American Association of Museums for its Museums and Community Initiative. See PDF.

M. Sharon Jeannotte (public administration)
M. Sharon Jeannotte is Senior Fellow at the Centre on Governance of the University of Ottawa. From 2005 to 2007, she was Senior Advisor to the Canadian Cultural Observatory in the Department of Canadian Heritage. From 1999 to 2005, she was the Manager of International Comparative Research in the Department’s Strategic Research and Analysis Directorate. See website.

Deborah Leslie (Geography)
Deborah Leslie is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto and a Canada Research Chair in the Cultural Economy (Tier II). She is the author and co-author of a number of recent articles on the design sector, creativity, urban-economic development and cultural policy, on the ethical, spatial and cultural dimensions of commodity chains. Most recently she has been conducting research on the social dynamics of innovation in fashion and art in Toronto, and on the Cirque du Soleil in Montreal. She is a co-editor a special issue of Environment and Planning A on geographies of creativity, and of a forthcoming Routledge book entitled Spaces of Vernacular Creativity: Rethinking the Cultural Economy. See website.

Ann Markusen (economics)
Dr. Markusen has been professor and Director of in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota since 1999. She is principle author of the trilogy of studies The Artistic Dividend: the hidden contribution of the arts to the regional economy (2003); Artist’s Centres: impacts on careers, neighbourhoods and economies (2006) and Crossover: How Artists Build Careers across Commercial, Not for Profit and Community Work (2006). Her theoretical work with Greg Shrock on the distinctive city, divergent patterns in growth, hierarchy and specialisation is rewriting the framework for arts and culture in urban and regional planning (forthcoming, Cornell, 2009). See website.

Shauna McCabe
Shauna McCabe is Canada Research Chair in Critical Theory in the Interpretation of Culture at Mount Allison University where she leads interdisciplinary research with regards to creative practice and cultural space. This appointment draws upon her investigations of the pragmatic and symbolic aspects of cultural practice and cultural infrastructure as Senior Curator of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (2001-2005), and, subsequently, Director of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Extending her doctoral investigations of critical landscape aesthetics in contemporary art completed at the University of British Columbia in 2001, McCabe writes frequently on space, art, and architecture. She published ancient motel landscape, a collection of poetry, in 2005. See website.

Del Muise (social and cultural history)
Del Muise is Emeritus Research Professor of History at Carleton University, a co-investigator of the Canadian and Their Pasts CURA, and co-editor of The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (1993), which won the prize in regional history from the Canadian Historical Association. He has been a frequent contributor to the social and cultural history of the Atlantic region, particularly in the journal Acadiensis, most recently “The Canso Causeway: Tartan Tourism, Industrial Development and the Promise of Progress for Cape Breton”. He has been director and was responsible for developing the masters program in Public History at Carleton University. His current focus is the politics of public memory in connection with the Canadians and Their Pasts project, which features a broad enquiry into how Canadians use and think about the past in various circumstances. He is also interested in the impact of federalism on museums and other reflections of national identity from a comparative perspective, including a project dealing with Australia and Canada. He has a continuing interest in heritage issues in the broad area of how the “Past” comes to be used for political and other objectives. Before coming to Carleton in 1978 he spent a decade as the curator of Atlantic Canada history at the then National Museum of Man, where he also collaborated with various NFB producers and directors on various media products in Canadian history. In his teaching and research he also has an active interest in web-based dissemination projects. See website.

Ross Nelson (geography)
The Academic Director and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts at one of Canada’s newest universities, Thompson Rivers University, Dr. Nelson’s theoretical work is in the Innisian tradition, exploring staples economies, patterns of migration and the changing economic structure of peripheral communities in BC, Canada, and Europe. He was a member of the SSHRC-funded CURA on the cultural future of small cities, has collaborated with the federal government on a community mapping project, and was a central contributor to The Small Cities Book (2005) and Becoming British Columbia: a Demographic History (2008). No stranger to interdisciplinary collaboration, Dr. Nelson has also pioneered an international double degree program in geography and geomatics and recently studied cultural clusters within Sweden as a visiting researcher at the University of Gävle’s Institute of Technology and the Built Environment. See website.

Justin O’Connor
Justin O’Connor studied History and Politics at the University of Kent, and a Masters in Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex. In 1989 he completed a PhD on French Intellectuals and the People in France, 1820-1968. He has been involved in research and policy development around cultural/creative industries and urban cultures since 1989, when he co-authored Manchester’s first cultural industries survey. He was involved in the development of Manchester’s ‘creative quarter’, the first national conference on the Night-Time Economy, and led the city’s cultural production strategy in 1998. This research led to the establishment of the Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS) the UK’s first dedicated support agency for the sector; Justin was Chair of CIDS until 2006. In 2000 Justin co-founded the Forum on Creative Industries (FOCI) which became the UK’s leading network of creative industry academics, policy makers and consultants, feeding directly into the policy making process of the UK government’s Creative Industries Task Force, especially around the local-urban dimension. The move to QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty in October 2008 provides the basis for a new set of projects in a new setting. Justin is leading an ARC linkage project — Creative Clusters, Soft Infrastructure and New Media: Developing Capacity in China and Australia — partnered with three Chinese universities in Shanghai and Beijing and with Arup (Sydney). See website.

Kate Oakley
Kate Oakley is a writer and policy analyst, specialising in the cultural industries, cultural labour markets and regional development. She is a Visiting Professor in Innovation at the University of the Arts in London and at the Department of Cultural Policy and Management, City University. She has recently co-edited, ‘Making Meaning, Making Money,’ a series of essays on contemporary cultural policy. See website.

Christine Ramsay (media studies)
Christine Ramsay teaches Media Studies and is Head of the Department of Media Production and Studies at the University of Regina. She is currently Chair of the Regina Arts Advisory Committee, Co-Chair of Regina’s ArtsAction Inc. and a Board Member of Regina’s Inner Circle Creative City Development Corp. Her research focuses on facilitating university-community partnerships in advancing the creative ecology of the City of Regina, social entrepreneurship, and specifically the role of arts/culture/business/training/education synergies in downtown revitalization. See website.

Paul Théberge (communication)
Professor Théberge is a CRC Chair in the Technological Mediations of Culture and professor in the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture and the School for Studies in Art and Culture (music) at Carleton University. Dr. Théberge’s work will examine the impact these developments are having on the music industry, particularly in terms of legal, technical, economical and social concerns. A musician and composer himself, Dr. Théberge’s previous studies have examined musicians, consumers and the music industry as a whole. His current research looks at the Internet and how it promotes and distributes music, and what this means for consumers and artists. He is also a co-investigator in a Major Collaborative Research Initiative, headed by Dr. William Coleman of McMaster University, on “Globalization and Autonomy.” Within this multi-disciplinary project, Dr. Théberge is researching the role of music in global culture. A recent work on “technology, creative practice and copyright” was published in Music and Copyright edited by Frith and Marshall (2004). His chapter, "Plugged In," in the Cambridge Companion to Rock and Pop has been translated into five languages, and Dr. Théberge continues his studies of Glenn Gould. See website.

David Throsby (economics)
Professor Throsby’s Economics of Culture (London: Cambridge, 2001) has been translated into five languages. Dr. Throsby teaches economics at Macquarie University in Australia and has been a consultant to a number of international organizations and NGOs, including the World Bank, UNESCO, OECD UNCTAD and the J. Paul Getty Trust. He was elected a fellow off the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences in 1988, served as a member of the UNESCO Experts Committee on the Cultural Diversity Convention, and is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Cultural Economics and the International Journal of Cultural Policy. He is interested in the links between cultural and ecological sustainability.

Owen Underhill (music composition)
Composer, conductor, teacher, flutist, Professor Underhill is professor of music in the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and past winner of the Western Canadian Music Award for Outstanding Classical Composition (2007) and Juno nominee for Best Classical composition (2001). He is a frequent co-writer with Michael Bushnell for Orpheus (2002) for the flute, clarinet, horn, trombone, harp, percussion and string quartet, The Faerie Queen Suite (2002) chamber orchestra, and Tristan and Isolde (2002). The World of Light (2007) and was commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony for solo tenor and full orchestra. Professor Underhill has been founder and artistic co-director of the Turning Point ensemble, since 2001, and artistic director of Vancouver New Music (1987-2000) where he helped in the premiere of 125 new works. A past director of the School for Contemporary Arts at SFU, Professor Underhill is special advisor of the move to the Woodward’s building in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, and collaborating with an artist-led centre in community arts development. His research interest is in the emergence of new artistic practices and young musical artists in the creative economy. See website.

Darren Wershler (Communication Studies)
Dr. Darren Wershler is the author or co-author of ten books, most recently, The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting (McClelland & Stewart, Cornell University Press), and apostrophe (ECW), with Bill Kennedy. Darren is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, part of the faculty at the CFC Media Lab TELUS Interactive Art & Entertainment Program, and a Research Affiliate of the IP Osgoode Intellectual Property Law & Technology Program. Forthcoming works include a monograph on Guy Maddin's film My Winnipeg (University of Toronto Press) and a selected and new edition of the poetry of Steve McCaffery (Wilfrid Laurier University Press).