Call for Papers: Institute of Political Economy Graduate Conference 2025

We are proud to announce the Institute of Political Economy’s Annual Graduate Conference theme, Hyper-politics and Anxious Identities: Seeking Solidarity in Volatile Times. We are inviting paper submissions exploring the rise of hyper-politics, the complexities of modern identity, and the challenges of fostering solidarity amid political instability. This year’s theme delves into the evolving role of political action, the impacts of global polarization, and the reshaping of public discourse in an era of heightened political emotions. This event will be taking place on March 21, 2025.

We are accepting submission related to themes, but not limited to:

• Identity, Political Identity, Political Alienation
• Democracy, Populism, Rise of the Far Right, Polarization
• Digital Activism, Virtue Signaling, Hyper-politics
• Environment, Climate Change, Eco-Anxiety
• Misinformation, Dark Epistemologies, Anti-politics
• Political mobilization, Activism, Political Branding

We are encouraging students who are interested in participating to submit a 200-word abstract to the The deadline for these submissions will be February 21, 2025.

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Leo Panitch, mentor, supporter, and the inspiration behind the creation of the Institute of Political Economy passed away from COVID-19 and pneumonia on December 19, 2020, shortly after a cancer diagnosis. Unfortunately, COVID restriction put our plans for an event to celebrate his legacy on hold.

On Saturday, December 10th, 2022, we were finally able to gather together and organize a symposium, which assessed the legacy of Panitch’s scholarship, education, and activism, featured roundtables throughout the day (see list below) and a keynote address by IPE Visiting Professor Stephen Maher.

The work of Leo panitch left an immense impact on the field of political economy – from his critique of social democracy to his groundbreaking theorization, with Sam Gindin, of globalization and the American empire. As a professor at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, he helped to place the University at the forefront of the study of political economy in Canada, and played a key role in the creation of the Institute of Political Economy. At the same time, he was deeply involved in politics, including the Waffle, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, and the Socialist Project. This symposium will assess the legacy of Panitch’s scholarship, education, and activism, featuring contributions from friends, comrades, students, and political economy scholars.

Event Details:

Keynote: “Liberal Democracy, Authoritarian Statism, and the New Finance Capital” (Stephen Maher)and Moderated by Justin Paulson

 Stephen Maher is a Post-Doctoral fellow at Ontario Tech University, and the  author of Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power. He is also the Associate Editor of The Socialist Register.

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The institute of Political Economy is pleased to announce we have 3 visitors for the 2022 – 2023 academic year.

Postdoctoral Fellow

September 2022 – August 2024

Phil Henderson is a settler, originally from Saugeen Anishinaabek territories and a PhD candidate in Political Science and Indigenous Nationhood at the University of Victoria. Upon completion of his dissertation, In and Against Canada, he will be joining the Institute of Political Economy at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ in September 2022 as a SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellow. Phil’s postdoctoral project, The Army of (Re)Production and the Defenders of the Land, intends to study the interrelationships between Indigenous land/water defenders and (self-)organized workers in what’s presently Canada, with an interest in both their disjunctures and conjunctures.

Visiting Professor
Stephen Maher
September 2022 – December 2022

Dr. Stephen Maher received his Ph.D. from York University, and is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Ontario Tech University. Dr. Maher’s research focuses on the relationship between state and corporate power in the American and international contexts. His first book, Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power, draws on extensive archival research to challenge the idea that the political power of business is a result of corporate “lobbying” of a passive state. Instead, Dr. Maher shows that the state plays an essential, active role in organizing fractious business interests into the power of a capitalist class. Moreover, he illustrates how the state has been central to the development of corporate organization, and traces the roots of “financialization” to the heart of the post-war period – arguing that this is not a symptom of American decline, but has rather facilitated internationalization and diversification. Dr. Maher’s current research, including a forthcoming book, examines the role of state intervention since the 2008 crisis in the rise of giant asset management firms.

Visiting Professor

January 2023 – April 2023

Ashima Sood is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Urbanism and Cultural Economics at Anant National University. In 2022, she was also Urban Studies Foundation International Fellow and Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Department of International Development.

Lying at the intersection of institutional economics and urban and development studies, Sood’s work combines qualitative and quantitative methods to examine privatized forms of urban governance and urban informality in India through a political economy lens. Her research has received recognition and/or funding from the India Foundation of the Arts, the Azim Premji University Foundation, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, the Centre de Sciences Humaines and the Regional Studies Association. A co-edited volume entitled India’s Greenfield Urban Future: The Politics of Land, Planning and Infrastructure is forthcoming at Orient BlackSwan. She has served as International Corresponding Editor at Urban Studies, as part of the Editorial Board at the Journal of Urban Affairs, and as an editorial advisory group member with the Economic and Political Weekly’s Review of Urban Affairs. Her previous affiliations include the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Hyderabad, NALSAR University and the Indian School of Business. She earned her PhD in Economics from Cornell University.

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The Department of Law and Legal Studies is organizing a talk, titled “Statelessness, Forced Isolation and Crimmigration in Canada” with Deepan Budlakoti.

Event Information:

Friday, April 1, 2022 from 2:00pm – 3:30pm, via zoom. To register for this event, please click here.

Deepan Budlakoti is born and raised in Canada, stateless for over 10 years and was held at the Ottawa-ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ Detention Centre for over 4 years. He’s an advocate for the human rights of prisoners and people with precarious immigration status.

The panel will include  Alex Neve, Senior Fellow with the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and Senator Kim Pate.

(he/him)
Senior Fellow with the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs
Adjunct Professor of international human rights law at the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University

Independent Senator for Ontario
Territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg

Registration for this event is required, please click here to register for the event.

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We will be kicking off our 21st annual graduate student conference (un)masking with a keynote presentation from Institute of Political Economy alum, Dr. Lindsey McKay!

Dr. Lindsey McKay is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Sociology, Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Colombia. She is a sociologist and political economist of health, medicine, and care work focused on social relations of power and inequality. While teaching dominates her daily work, she publishes on care work, specifically parental leave, and organ donation for transplantation. She is a co-investigator on “Reimagining Care/Work Policy,” a SSHRC Partnership grant (2020-2027). Dr. McKay completed her MA at the Institute of Political Economy (2000) and her PhD in Sociology in the Collaborative Political Economy Specialization (2015) at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. We are thrilled to have Dr. McKay return to the Institute (virtually) to kick off our conference the morning of Thursday, February 25 to share her research in this keynote presentation, “”Back to ‘normal’? Prospects for a more just post-pandemic world”.

Following Dr. McKay’s presentation, hear from graduate students and alumni from the Institute of Political Economy and the broader ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ community on their research. We will also be joined by many of our cross-appointed faculty members and collaborative PhD students who have graciously offered to moderate our panels. The theme of this year’s conference is (un)masking. After an undoubtedly tumultuous year, and in an unprecedented time in history, we invite you to this year’s two-day event held virtually via Zoom. Through this interdisciplinary conference, we strive to create a welcoming, collaborative environment where students, faculty, and community members alike can engage with the issues, processes, and injustices that dominated news headlines throughout 2020, and reshaped our daily lives.

Our panelists presentations over the two days of the conference will speak to the following themes (full schedule):

• Digital and Data Capitalism: Imagining Future Governance
• Accessibility and Affordability: Wealth Inequality and Housing
• Precarity and Pay: Im/Migration and Labour in Canada
• Protest and Politics: Mobilizing Resistance
• The Politics of Care, Gender, and Sexuality
• Capitalism, Consumption, and Crisis
• Labour and Justice: Towards Worker Solidarity
• Colonialism and Necropolitics in Global Contexts

This event is open to the public, but registration is required. Registrants are invited to attend as much or as little as the conference as they would like. An email containing the Zoom meeting invites will be sent out to registrants the day prior to the conference.

Share widely and stay up to date with conference updates !

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