Meet some of our researchers.
McMaster's School of Labour Studies has faculty expertise in:
- Precarious employment
- Unions and social movements
- Equity and diversity
- Labour politics and strategy
- Immigrant worker rights
- Health and safety
- Sexuality and gender
- Resource workers and workplaces
Leading Edge Research
Our faculty members conduct leading-edge research on domestic and international labour issues. We take interdisciplinary approaches to our research, drawing on theories and methodologies from across the Social Sciences, including Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Geography, Health and Aging, and Social Work. We are leaders in community-engaged scholarship, collaborating with unions, community organizations and policy-makers on research that will help make work better for everyone.
Stephanie Ross
Associate Professor | Director of School of Labour Studies
Stephanie Ross’s research and teaching focuses on public sector unionism, union political strategy, emerging forms of worker organizing, labour movement renewal, and democracy in working-class and social movement organizations.
Suzanne Mills
Associate Professor
Suzanne Mills’ research explores diverse topics pertaining to equity at work and worker representation. Her research addresses gender and indigeneity in resource employment and union engagement with Indigenous peoples and gender and sexual minorities.
Stephanie Premji
Associate Professor | Graduate Chair
Stephanie Premji researches working conditions and health problems in jobs held primarily by women, immigrants and minorities (ethnic and linguistic). She also examines social inequalities across and within occupations that have implications for health.
Judy Fudge
PhD, University of Oxford; Osgoode Law School, York University, Toronto ON; MA York University; BA McGill, Montreal
Professor | LIUNA Enrico Henry Mancinelli Professor in Global Labour Issues
Judy Fudge’s current research looks at the labour/migration nexus, unacceptable forms of work and the relationship between current campiness against modern slavery and the idea of unfree labour.
Tommy Wu
Assistant Professor
Tommy Wu’s research and teaching interests are situated at the intersection of race and political economy, exploring how different groups become susceptible to extraction and violence in all their forms. His research focuses on the ideological and spatial dimensions of contemporary labour regimes in various industries.
Geraldina Polanco
Assistant Professor
Geraldina Polanco is an ethnographer and global scholar whose work is situated at the intersection of work and migration. Her research explores the role of labour-sending states in the regulation of temporary labour programs, and how Canada’s expansion of its Temporary Foreign Worker Program has introduced new regimes for establishing labour consent.
David Goutor
Assistant Professor | Undergraduate Chair
David Goutor’s research explores Canadian labour’s approach to immigration, and the relationship between the labour movement and human rights campaigns since the 1940s. He also studies the politics of the living wage movement.