Director
Emily Laxer is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University’s Glendon Campus, where she holds a York Research Chair in Populism, Rights, and Legality. Her current research explores the relationship between contemporary populist political movements and articulations of rights and legality in Canada. Dr. Laxer’s work has been published in both English and French in such peer-reviewed journals as Ethnic and Racial Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Nations and Nationalism, Contemporary Studies in Society and History, Comparative Sociology, and edited volumes. Her research also forms the basis of a sole-authored monograph, Unveiling the Nation: The Politics of Secularism in France and Québec (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), which received the John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award from the Canadian Sociological Association (2020).
Collaborators
Rémi Vivès is a quantitative researcher in the social sciences. His current research draws on techniques from data science to derive insights from digital data across a diverse range of fields, including public health, finance, and populism. He currently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Economics at Glendon College, York University, and received his PhD in Economics from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France. Before coming to York, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Portuguese Catholic University and a Franco-German University Fellow at the University of Konstanz.
Efe Peker is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Ottawa. He holds a joint-PhD in History (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and in Sociology (Simon Fraser University), and he completed his SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017-19) in Sociology at McGill University. His research focuses on state-religion relations, secularity, immigration, and nationalist-populist politics in Canada, Western Europe, and the Middle East. His work appeared in journals such as Comparative Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies and The American Sociologist. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming book Populisme et sciences sociales : Perspectives québécoises, canadiennes et transatlantiques (University of Ottawa Press).
Affiliates
Frédérick Guillaume Dufour is Professor of Sociology, as well as Director of Multidisciplinary Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Université du Québec à Montréal and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Université Laval. His research focuses on political, historical and comparative sociology. His books include Entre peuple et élite, le populisme de droite and La sociologie du nationalisme: relations, cognition, comparaisons et processus and La sociologie historique: traditions, trajectoires et débats. Professor Dufour is also co-editor of a forthcoming volume Populisme et sciences sociales : Perspectives québécoises, canadiennes et transatlantiques, published by the University of Ottawa Press.
Daniel Drache is Professor emeritus of political science, York University. His published work and books focus on mapping and documenting the complexities of globalisation at a time of unparalleled inequality. He has written extensively about globalization, neoliberalism and North American integration. Most recently, he has published Has Populism Won? The War on Liberal Democracy, ECW 2023 with Marc Froese. It addresses a series of issues including why are we so susceptible to this pernicious political style at this moment? How did we get here? And more importantly can we get back to more evenhanded governments? He also is a contributor to The Conversation and other media.
Elke Winter is a Professor at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies and Director of Research at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities, University of Ottawa. She wrote Max Weber et les relations ethniques. Du refus du biologisme racial à l’État multinational (PUL 2004), won the Canadian Sociology Association’s John Porter Tradition of Excellence Award for Us, Them, and Others: Pluralism and National Identity in Diverse Societies (UTP 2011), and co-edited When States Take Rights Back: Citizenship Revocation and Its Discontents(Routledge 2020). Her current work, which includes special issues of The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, examines how neoliberalism refashions societal (dis)integration along and across ethnic and racial fault lines.
Research Assistants
Tamara Donnelly is a recently graduated masters student from the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her thesis focused on retail food environments in the Canadian Arctic, developed through community-based participatory research in Paulatuk, Northwest Territories. She is also an alumni of Glendon College (York University) where she completed a trilingual degree, double-majoring in International Studies and Canadian Studies. She is deeply passionate about Canadian research and aims to further her work on topics related to Canada’s diverse communities and unique challenges.
Jacob McLean is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. He is currently finishing his dissertation, Carbon Convoys: Extractive Populism and the Canadian Far Right. He is also a member of the Zetkin Collective, an ecosocialist group of scholars and activists working on the political ecologies of the far right.
Naiomi Perera is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at York University. She completed her MA in the same department, researching anti-radicalization surveillance technology. Her dissertation research explores the production and application of anti-radicalization and countering violent extremism (CVE) knowledge. Naiomi is also a community organizer and has been on the editorial board of student-run journal New Sociology: Journal of Critical Praxis since 2021.
