People in the Department

Staff

Dr. Simon Black
Department Chair, Labour Studies
Office: PLZ 333
905-688-5550 x5350
simon.black@brocku.ca

Claire Gallop
Administrative Assistant
Office: PLZ 328
905-688-5550 x3476
Labour.Studies@brocku.ca

Diane Leon
Academic Advisor
Office: PLZ 326
905-688-5550 x4245
dleon@brocku.ca

Core Faculty

Dr. Simon Black
Associate Professor, Labour Studies
Office: PLZ 333
905-688-5550 x5350
simon.black@brocku.ca

I am generally interested in the political economy of work, labour, and care. My past research has explored community-labour coalitions, community unionism, and ‘alt-labour’. I have also written about unions in the care economy and working-class politics. My current research focuses on domestic work, domestic workers’ rights, and domestic workers’ organizing and collective action in the Caribbean.

Dr. Jordan House
Assistant Professor, Labour Studies
Office: PLZ 335
905-688-5550 x3892
jhouse@brocku.ca

My research focuses on prison labour, labour movement renewal, and new forms of worker organization.

Dr. Alison Braley-Rattai
Associate Professor, Labour Studies
Office: PLZ 331
905-688-5550 x6651
abraleyrattai@brocku.ca

My areas of research and teaching expertise include the interaction of labour rights and the Charter, industrial relations, labour and employment law, as well as human rights in the workplace.

Dr. Paul Christopher Gray
Assistant Professor, Labour Studies
Office: PLZ 347
905-688-5550 x5419
pgray2@brocku.ca

In general, I study the history of theories and practices of justice, as well as democratic theory and social inequality. Recently, my research has focused on the role of public sector workers in democratizing governance and administration, and on new forms of labour organizing among precarious workers in the airline industry. In 2017, I received the Dissertation Prize from York University. My edited volume, From the Streets to the State: Changing the World by Taking Power (State University of New York Press 2018), will be released in paperback in 2019.

Dr. Chantal Mancini
Assistant Professor, Labour Studies
Office: PLZ 334
cmancini@brocku.ca

My research is concerned with public sector unions, collective bargaining, and union democracy, with a particular focus on unions in the education sector.

Dr. Larry Savage
(SAB — July 1, 2024-25)
Professor, Labour Studies
Office: PLZ 329
905-688-5550 x5007
lsavage@brocku.ca

My research focuses primarily on the politics of organized labour in Canada. Recent research has revolved around the changing nature of party-union relations, the strategic use of rights discourse and the constitutional politics of labour.

Participating faculty

Dr. Jonah Butovsky
Associate Professor, Sociology
Office: AS 406
905-688-5550 x4371
jbutovsky@brocku.ca

My teaching involves quantitative methods and political sociology. I am currently working on a project that examines the political potential of Canadian popular music and another that studies the effects of left-nationalism on the development of Canadian socialism.

Dr. Tami Friedman
Associate Professor, History
Office: GLN 225
905-688-5550 x3709
tfriedman@brocku.ca

My research focuses on the causes and consequences of economic restructuring in the post-World War II United States, with an emphasis on how capital migration and deindustrialization have transformed workers, communities, industrial policy (at the local, state, regional, and federal levels), and national politics.

Dr. Thomas Dunk
Professor, Sociology 
Office: STH 401A
905-688-5550 x4762
tdunk@brocku.ca

Thomas Dunk’s research interests focus on linkages between economy, culture, and society, with a specific focus on class, masculinities, and economic transformation. He is the author of It’s a Working Man’s Town: Male Working-Class Culture; editor of Social Relations in Resource Hinterlands and Marginal Zones in the Age of Globalization: Case Studies from the North and South; and co-editor with Randle Nelsen and Stephen McBride of The Training Trap: Ideology, Training, and the Labour Market. He has also published articles and book chapters on workers and environmentalism, whiteness and working-class identity, deindustrialization, hunting, and neoliberalism. His current research concerns the application of the concept of the circular bioeconomy in the forest industry, as well as industrial ruination and its link to populism and masculinities in resource hinterland regions as witnessed in controversies about hunting, animal rights, and environmentalism.

Dr. Michelle Webber
Professor, Sociology
Office: STH 420
905-688-5550 x4411
mwebber@brocku.ca

My research is in the area of the sociology of higher education with a focus on the regulation of academic work. Recent research investigates the regulation of academic work (the production of knowledge, forms of knowledge) in the context of accountability governance.

Professor Emeritus

Dr. Ann Duffy
Professor, Labour Studies/Sociology

Dr. Daniel Glenday
Professor, Labour Studies/Sociology

Instructors

Ashley Shalmoni

Dale Shin

Melissa St. Germaine-Small

Brent Toye

Brad Walchuk