Peter Grimmett
[Title TBA]
Peter P. Grimmett is Professor and Head of the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC). A former Associate Dean at Simon Fraser University (SFU), he also served as Director of the Institute for Studies in Teacher Education at SFU, was appointed by the BC Cabinet as the BC Deans of Education appointment to the Council of the BC College of Teachers (the professional body that governed teaching and teacher education in the province) between 2007-2010. He has recently been involved in a five-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) -funded $2.5 million Canada-wide study of the impact of public policy decisions on conditions of teaching and learning. He has given keynote addresses at international conferences in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto (Canada), Kansas City, Honolulu, and Seattle (USA), Oslo (Norway), Stockholm (Sweden), Lahti, Tampere, and Helsinki (Finland), Tel Aviv (Israel), Llubjana (Slovenia), Queensland (Australia), and, most recently, Seoul (South Korea).
Peter Grimmett has published 48 refereed journal articles, written 11 books and 39 book chapters, and in May 2000, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Tampere, Finland, in recognition of his outstanding merits as a researcher and educator in the areas of professional development and teacher education. His most recent book (written with Jon Young), Teacher Certification and the Professional Status of Teaching in North America: The New Battleground for Public Education (Information Age Publishing, 2012) locates recent developments in teacher certification in North America within a broader, international policy context characterized as hegemonic neo-liberalism wherein economic rationalism has begun to trump professional judgment. His daughter Deborah Grimmett is an award-winning concert pianist (also with the piano duo Piano Pinnacle, in collaboration with composer-pianist Iman Habibi) and a private piano instructor.
Joel Bakan
What’s Left? Reclaiming The Public Sphere
Joel Bakan is a professor of law at the UBC and an internationally renowned legal scholar and commentator. A former Rhodes Scholar and law clerk to Chief Justice Brian Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada, Bakan has law degrees from Oxford, Dalhousie, and Harvard. His critically acclaimed book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, 2004), was published in over 20 languages and became a bestseller in several countries. The book inspired a feature documentary film, The Corporation, written by Bakan and co-created with Mark Achbar, which won numerous awards, including best foreign documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. Bakan’s highly regarded scholarly work includes Just Words: Constitutional Rights and Social Wrongs (University of Toronto Press, 1997), as well as textbooks, edited collections, and numerous articles in leading legal and social science journals. His new book, Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children (Free Press, 2011) illustrates how companies exploit the special vulnerabilities of children, manipulate parents’ fears, and operate with callous disregard for children’s well-being, also offering concrete and realistic proposals for legal reforms that would protect all children from these predatory practices. Bakan, who is also a professional jazz guitarist, lives in Vancouver with his wife, Rebecca Jenkins, and their two children.