A new director has been named to lead York University’s Global Labour Research Centre (GLRC), a hub for pan-University research collaboration based in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS). Professor Luann Good Gingrich, who is in her 16th year at York, began her directorship on July 1.
Luann Good Gingrich
Good Gingrich is an associate professor in the School of Social Work. As director of the GLRC, she hopes to carry forward the creative and inclusive research community cultivated by past directors.
“We are a somewhat small but dedicated and vibrant community of researchers,” she says. “I hope to build on those connections and invite others into the community with the main purpose of collaborative research on a diverse range of research themes, including: work, employment and labour rights; migration, citizenship and work; gender relations in work and labour movements; revitalization of workers’ movements; and work and health.”
The GLRC is well positioned for encouraging and supporting transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration, imagination and action, she says, adding that it has become a centre for research excellence and University-community partnership.
Rapidly shifting global landscapes, she says, provide opportunities and challenges for real-world research, practical education and engaged leadership on issues related to work, labour and livelihoods, including the climate crisis, automation and displacement, as well as fractured social relations and structural violence.
She notes that during a time of turbulence in the diverse world of work, there is a pressing need to expand and mobilize the GLRC’s “diverse and inclusive community of scholars and practitioners to advance engaged, relevant and political research to critically examine these urgent issues.”
The GLRC also facilitates graduate and undergraduate student mentorship and community building, promotes engagement for social justice-oriented and applied research through links to a substantial community of practitioners and the broader public, and facilitates international research and learning connections through hosting and supporting international scholars and research partnerships.
Good Gingrich has focused her own research over the past 20 years on local and transnational dynamics of social exclusion and inclusion in social welfare systems, labour markets and communities, particularly for individuals and groups engaged in transnational livelihoods. She explores these social realities in numerous journal articles; a sole-authored book, Out of Place: Social Exclusion and Mennonite Migrants in Canada (2016); and a co-edited volume, Transnational Social Policy: Social Welfare in a World on the Move (2017). She is the principal investigator of an ongoing Social Sciences & Humanties Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant titled “Tracing and Addressing Social Exclusion in Canada (TASC)” and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Migration and Border Studies.
“We have planned an exciting lineup of seminars and panel discussions that will showcase the cutting-edge work of prominent scholars and practitioners,” she says. “Check out the GLRC website for details. We look forward to seeing you.”
The GLRC Year Opener: Cutting Edge Themes in Global Labour Studies will take place on Oct. 1 from 1:30 to 3:45 p.m. at 519 Kaneff Tower. It is the first event in the Global Labour Speakers Series for the 2019-20 academic year, and details are available online.