Trent historian, Professor Joan Sangster of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies is the first Canadian scholar to win the International Labor History Association (ILHA) Book of the Year Award for 2014.

The prestigious international award for her co-edited book, Workers in Hard Times (University of Illinois Press, 2014) which was co-edited by Leon Fink, Joseph McCartin and Prof. Sangster and represents a cogent contribution to global labor history with lessons drawn from past and present worker struggles. The book emerged from a workshop at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, organized by Sangster and her American colleagues.

“I am delighted to receive this significant award that ties together various themes in global labour history,” said Prof. Sangster. Since 1988 the ILHA has periodically recognized authors with a “Book of the Year” award. Past award-wining authors include a number of leading labour historians from around the world. Books recognized contribute new and engaging research on labor history matters.

The current award-winning book consists of twelve essays in four distinct sections: Depressions and Working-Class Lives; Economic Dislocation as Political Crisis; Social-Welfare Struggles from the Liberal and the Neoliberal  State; and Workers and the Shakeup of the New World Order. The judges’ citation noted particularly revealing essays by Gaetan Heroux and Bryan Palmer on Toronto labor; David Montgomery on workers’ responses to depressions; Melanie Nolan on worker resistance in the antipodean state; and Lu Zhang on recent Chinese auto worker strikes. David Montgomery’s essay is his last written before his death; his son, Edward Montgomery, provides a piece in the volume as well, on worker reactions to industrial decline. In sum, the edited collection covers North America, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and Asia in a valuable cross-section of worker engagements in past and contemporary socio-economic challenges.

The author of numerous other award winning books, at Trent Prof. Sangster has been a Dean of Graduate Studies, Director of the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies, and has also chaired the Departments of History and Gender and Women’s Studies.  

Posted on Friday, April 24, 2015.