The changing nature of work in the global economy, modern labour movements, challenges faced by workers and their organizations, as well as forms of collective action undertaken to resist neo-liberalism – all of this will be explored at an upcoming conference, New Voices in Labour Studies 2010: Emerging Perspectives on Workers and Workplaces.

The conference will take place Friday, Oct. 15 and Saturday, Oct. 16, from 8:30am to 5:30pm in the York Research Tower, Keele campus. It is presented by York’s Work & Labour Studies Program, the York Centre for Research on Work & Society, Ryerson University and the Labour College of Canada.

This interdisciplinary, two-day conference will include research on contemporary issues, papers that place these subjects in historical perspective, and thematic panels and workshops on teaching and researching in the field of labour studies.

This is the fourth year for the conference – the first in Toronto – where junior scholars in the field present their work and meet other emerging voices in labour studies, as well as interact with more senior scholars who serve as commentators on the panels.

“This conference showcases the labour studies community’s continuing vibrancy and impressive national reach,” says Professor Stephanie Ross, coordinator of York’s Work & Labour Studies Program. “Across Canada, labour studies attract researchers who combine rigorous cutting edge scholarship with a capacity to speak to the real and pressing challenges we face in our working lives. Anyone with an interest in how to make work and the economy more socially just will take a lot from this conference.”

The conference is sponsored at York by the Office of the Dean in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, the Graduate Program in Social & Political Thought, and the Department of Geography, and at Ryerson by the Department of History, the Dean’s Office in the Faculty of Arts, the Office of the Vice-President of Research & Innovation, and the Centre for Labour-Management Relations. In addition, the Canadian Labour Congress’s Labour College of Canada has also provided much-appreciated support.

For more information, visit the Centre for Research on Work & Society or contact Stephanie Ross at stephr@yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile – York University’s daily e-bulletin.