Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration

Zachary Spicer is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration and Head of New College at York University. At York University he is a Faculty Affiliate with both the CITY Institute and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies. Beyond York, he is a member of the Digital Mobilities Lab, a member of the Laboratory on Local Elections, a member of the study team for the Electronic Elections Project and an affiliate member of the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy at Wilfrid Laurier University. He was previously the Director of Research and Outreach with the Institute of Public Administration of Canada and served as a Senior Policy Advisor with the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, where he worked on several key files, including the latest review of regional government.  He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Brock University and has published widely on local government and urban politics, including three books: The Boundary Bargain: Growth, Development and the Future of City-County Separation (2016), Local Government in Practice (2019, with Joseph Lyons and Kate Graham) and The Platform Economy and the Smart City (2021, co-edited with Austin Zwick). His latest book, Delivery by Design: Shared Services, Interlocal Contracting and Canadian Local Government, was released by University of Toronto Press in 2022. In recognition of his research, he received two early career achievement awards – the Norton Long Young Scholars Award and the Susan Clarke Young Scholars Award – from the Urban Politics section of the American Political Science Association. He received his PhD from the Department of Political Science at The University of Western Ontario and completed post-doctoral fellowship at the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Institute of Municipal Finance and Governance at the University of Toronto.