2023 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture
Progress vs. 2023: A Guide to the Fight Ahead

Listen to the full 2023 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture

We invite you to join us on Tuesday, May 23, 2023 for the Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture at Toronto Metropolitan University.

In January 2016, the Broadbent Institute lost our dear friend and inspiration Professor Ellen Meiksins Wood.

The Institute founded the annual Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize & Lecture to honour Ellen’s legacy as an internationally renowned scholar and to bring her work to new generations of Canadians. At this troubling political moment, Ellen's belief that democracy means “nothing more nor less than people’s power, or even the power of the common people or the poor” is more relevant than ever.

Ellen Meiksins Wood was one of the left's foremost theorists on democracy and history, and often promoted the idea that democracy always has to be fought for and secured from below, never benevolently conferred from above. Challenging the prevailing logic and assumptions in her field, Ellen’s scholarship emphasized the importance of political processes and class conflict in shaping historical change. Meiksins Wood authored nine influential books throughout her career, served on the editorial committee of the British journal The New Left Review and was a much-respected member of Britain's radical left. She was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in 1996.

In recognition of Ellen’s distinguished legacy of historical scholarship on political thought, the Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize is given annually to an academic, labour activist or writer and recognizes outstanding contributions in political theory, social or economic history, human rights, or sociology.

Each year’s recipient also delivers the Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture.

The 2023 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture will be delivered by economist Armine Yalnizyan—a leading voice on Canada’s economic scene. Her lecture, entitled Progress vs. 2023: A Guide to the Fight Ahead, will present her sweeping vision of what it means to be a progressive in 2023, taking us on a tour of the evolution of progressive ideas, and its constancy. She will show how context has shaped strategy, and lay out the push and the pull of the moment: the challenges facing the progressive agenda and the momentum building for it. You are invited to listen to an energizing take on what and who is at stake in this fight for our collective wellbeing.

For those unable to attend this free event in-person, the lecture will be livestreamed and recorded for later viewing.

About Armine Yalnizyan

Armine Yalnizyan is the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers and writes a bi-weekly business column for the Toronto Star. She served as a senior economic policy advisor to the federal Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development Canada in 2018 and 2019, and has been a member of a high-level task group on women in the economy convened by the federal Ministers of Finance and Middle Class Prosperity during the pandemic.

Armine helped shape and advance the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Inequality Project from 2006 to 2016, provided weekly business commentary for CBC from 2011 to 2018, and served as Vice President and President of the Canadian Association for Business Economics from 2013-2019.

The 2023 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture is delivered in partnership with
Toronto Metropolitan University, Faculty of Arts