Isabella Bakker, a political science professor in York’s Faculty of Arts, has received a $225,000 Trudeau Fellowship Prize for her cutting-edge work in feminist political economy. The announcement was made yesterday by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.
Trudeau Fellowships are awarded annually through a rigorous nomination process to highly accomplished Canadians who question society’s world views and teach the importance of responsible and engaged citizenship.
Right: Isabella Bakker
“Recognition by the Trudeau Foundation is a fantastic opportunity to further advance research in critical feminist political economy – something York is known for throughout the world,” said Bakker. “I also hope that the award will facilitate a more democratic and open approach on the part of policy-makers who have been slow to recognize the importance of gender-based analyses of macroeconomic policies and of national budgets for the achievement of a more just society.
“This award is an important tip of the hat to York and to my home Department of Political Science, both of which continue to foster world-class political economy and feminist research,” she said.
Stan Shapson, vice-president, research & innovation at York agrees that the award places the University at the forefront of research into the social impact of global economic policies. “We are tremendously proud that Isabella Bakker has been awarded the coveted Trudeau Fellowship,” says Shapson. “This award attests to Professor Bakker’s excellence in research, and sets her apart as an eminent scholar in the field of gender-based economic policy development enriching the lives of women globally.”
Bakker is a leading authority in the fields of political economy, public finance, gender and development. Throughout her career, her policy and advocacy work has been committed to the enhancement of democratic dialogue, equitable global social change and gender equality. She consistently explores and develops new national and international mechanisms to improve governance so as to promote the empowerment of women in an era of intensified globalization.
Her pioneering contributions in scholarly and advocacy work, integrating public policy, economics, international studies and gender-based analysis, have resulted in numerous articles and books. She is the author of The Strategic Silence: Gender and Economic Policy; and the editor of Rethinking Restructuring: Gender and Change in Canada; and the co-editor of Power, Production and Social Reproduction: Human In/security in the Global Political Economy, and most recently, Beyond States and Markets: The Challenges of Social Reproduction.
Bakker’s work was also recognized when she was named a Fulbright New Century Scholar in 2004-2005.
The Trudeau Fellowships are distributed through the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation over a three-year period and include an award of $150,000 in addition to a $75,000 travel, research and dissemination allowance.
More about Isabella Bakker
Bakker, who joined the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, at York in 1986, teaches international political economy, women and politics and public policy. Her work explores the links between theories about the social world and the effects or impact these have on the conditions of life that people face, in situations where power and potentials are often unequally distributed. Much of her recent work has involved the interplay between feminist perspectives and (international) public policy, and in particular macroeconomics, especially fiscal policy and gender questions, and how these relate to the conditions of life in both the global North and the South, and how these conditions might be improved.
She is an expert on gender-sensitive budgeting and has worked with the United Nations, UN Development Fund for women, the UN Development Program, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development on these questions. She has held a number of visiting positions, including at the European University Institute in Florence, at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and at Carleton University in Ottawa.