For Tom Dunk, a career in senior administration has offered a bird’s-eye view of the wide range of scholars and scholarship at Brock — an opportunity he is grateful to have had.

“The biggest highlight of being in senior administrative roles is the variety of amazing people you get to work with,” he says. “There are so many smart and interesting people across the University, and it’s really been a wonderful privilege to work with so many; I feel very lucky to have had all those opportunities.”

The retiring Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology served two terms as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, starting with his arrival at Brock in 2008.

He says it was rewarding to be involved in the development of several new programs in the Faculty — including the PhD in Child and Youth Studies, Canada’s first doctoral program in that area — alongside the growth of other units, such as Applied Disability Studies, the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, several research institutes, and many other academic and administrative changes.

“Faculty members, driven by their interpretation of both societal needs and student interest, drove most of these initiatives, and being able to be part of that was really wonderful,” he says.

In 2016, Dunk began a two-year term as Interim Provost and Vice-President, Academic, which he followed with a short term as Special Advisor to the President in 2018.

During his appointment, he was lead author and institutional champion for Brock University’s 2018-2025 institutional strategic plan: Niagara Roots — Global Reach. He was also a key figure in the negotiation of Brock’s first Strategic Mandate Agreements with the Province of Ontario.

In 2019, Dunk returned to the Department of Sociology and Criminology, where he took on the role of Graduate Program Director for the Master of Arts in Critical Sociology in 2021. He says returning to teaching, supervision and research was the ideal way to finish his career, as those aspects of academia were what attracted him in the first place.

Looking ahead to his retirement, Dunk is eager to have more time to devote to travel, biking and family as well as his ongoing research and writing. His book, It’s A Working-Man’s Town: Male Working-Class Culture went into a second edition in 2003. More recently, he has written about neoliberalism and populism as it relates to the scholarship around masculinity and class.

The recent discovery of documents belonging to a family member has sparked a new passion project.

“I have a project, partly motivated by personal circumstances, about the history of the Journeyman Barbers International Union, one of the founding unions of the American Federation of Labour,” he says. “My wife’s father and grandfather were barbers and they were both very involved with their local union, and she inherited some of her father’s papers dating back to when he was president of his local in the 1960s.”

Dean of Social Sciences Ingrid Makus says she is grateful for Dunk’s outstanding leadership across his many roles at the University.

“All through his time at Brock, Tom has stepped up and stepped in, often in challenging situations, continuously serving the University and the broader community and always doing so in thoughtful and admirable ways,” says Makus. “Generous in sharing his time and expertise, in whatever office position or capacity, he has continued to serve as a supportive advisor, mentor and colleague.”