The Global Labour Research Centre is pleased to announce the appointment of Adrian Smith, Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, as the new Director of the GLRC. He will replace professor Luann Good Gingrich, whose term as Director is concluding.

Professor Smith will begin his directorship on July 1, 2023 and he will lead the Centre’s re-chartering process in 2023-24. As Director, he hopes to continue the Centre’s growth as a locus for collaborative, inclusive, and community-engaged research fostered by previous Directors.

Smith is an accomplished scholar of political economy and labour law, as well as of Canadian state relations in the ‘global South’ and global capitalist development. Adrian has also worked on migrant justice issues since the early 2000s. He is a current co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law and Social Policy and has recently served as Academic Director of the Poverty Law Intensive Program at Parkdale Community Legal Services (PCLS), a fifty-year old program which forms the cornerstone of Osgoode’s social justice tradition. In addition to teaching and supervising law students at both York and Carleton University in the areas of collective bargaining, labour law, and the regulation of work in the global economy, Smith has for many years been an instructor with the Labour College of Canada, run under the auspices of the Canadian Labour Congress, which provides education opportunities for labour union members.

We are especially excited for Smith to join the GLRC at this opportune time, as 2023 is the 10-year anniversary of the Centre and we are celebrating with a new event series focusing on worker education and organizing. If you have ideas for events or other initiatives related to this focus and would like to be involved in our anniversary series, please contact us at glrc@yorku.ca.