Fonds 2007 - David Wolfe and Meric Gertler fonds

David A. Wolfe is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Co-Director of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. His research interests include the political economy of technological change and the role of local and regional economic development, with special reference to Canada and Ontario.

He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science from Carleton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He served as Executive Coordinator for Economic and Labour Policy in the Cabinet Office of the Government of Ontario from October 1990 to August 1993. Upon his return to the University of Toronto from 1993 until 1997, he was a research associate in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s Program on Law and the Determinants of Social Ordering.

Professor Wolfe was the Royal Bank Chair in Public and Economic Policy from 2009 to 2014. Since 2014, he is the lead investigator on the Creating Digital Opportunity Partnership (CDO) the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded project to study how Canada can best respond to the challenges posed by a rapidly changing digital landscape, while benefiting from emerging opportunities to promote our economic prosperity. From 1999 to 2011 he was national coordinator of the Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN), funded by SSHRC and was principal investigator on two Major Collaborative Research Initiatives, the first on Innovation Systems and Economic Development: The Role of Local and Regional Clusters in Canada, followed by a six year study on the Social Dynamics of Economic Performance: Innovation and Creativity in City Regions which ended in 2011.

He is the editor or co-editor of ten books and numerous scholarly articles, focusing mostly on regional and national politics.

He has acted as an advisor to the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, the Ontario Premier’s Council, the E-Business Opportunities Roundtable and the Electronic Commerce Task Force of Industry Canada, the National Research Council, the LEED Program of the OECD, the Ontario Panel on the Role of Government, the Ontario Research and Innovation Council, DG Region of the European Commission, and the Toronto Region Research Alliance. He was the CIBC Scholar-in-Residence for the Conference Board of Canada in 2008-2009 and published a book for the Conference Board, entitled 21st Century Cities in Canada: The Geography of Innovation.

Meric Gertler is President of the University of Toronto (2013–), Professor of Geography and Planning, the Goldring Chair in Canadian Studies, and a member of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He was previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science from 2008-2013.

He holds degrees from the McMaster University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. Professor Gertler is internationally renowned for his research on the geography of innovative activity and the economies of city-regions. He has served as an advisor to local, regional and national governments in Canada, the United States, Singapore and Europe, as well as to international agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union. He was the founding co-director of the Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems (PROGRIS) with Professor David Wolfe at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and served as director of the Department of Geography’s Program in Planning.

He has published nine books including Manufacturing Culture: The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice, and Growing Urban Economies: Innovation, Creativity, and Governance in Canadian City-Regions, the latter co-edited with Professor David Wolfe. He is also co-editor of the widely used Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography, winner of Choice Magazine’s “Outstanding Academic Book” award, and the New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography (with Gordon Clark, Maryann Feldman and Dariusz Wójcik).

He has held visiting appointments at Oxford University, University College London, UCLA, and the University of Oslo. He holds honorary doctorates from Lund University, Sweden, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and Université de Montréal. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Academy of Social Sciences (UK), the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He has received the Award for Scholarly Distinction in Geography from the Canadian Association of Geographers, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Distinguished Scholarship Honor from the Association of American Geographers, and the Sir Peter Hall Award from the Regional Studies Association (UK). In December 2015, Professor Gertler was appointed to the Order of Canada.