John Shields, Ryerson University

Profile photo of John Shields, expert at Ryerson University

Professor Toronto, Ontario jshields@torontomu.ca Office: (416) 979-5000 ext. 556167

Bio/Research

John Shields joined the Department of Politics and Public Administration in September 1988, after teaching in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Shields received his PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia in 1989. His Ph.D. dissert...

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Bio/Research

John Shields joined the Department of Politics and Public Administration in September 1988, after teaching in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Shields received his PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia in 1989. His Ph.D. dissertation is entitled British Columbia's New Reality: The Politics of Neo-Conservatism and Defensive Defiance . He also holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Master of Arts (MA) from the University of Windsor.

Dr Shields is a tenured Full Professor with over twenty years of university teaching experience in the areas of public administration and public policy, the politics and policy of communications and culture, the political economy of labour market and welfare state restructuring, immigrant settlement and integration policy and practices, and nonprofit sector studies. He holds a number of student teaching awards, and has developed and delivered distance education courses and modules and taught on-site public administration courses to practitioners at Queen's Park for the public service of Ontario, Canada and the North York Civic Centre to federal Canadian public servants. He has also been involved in a major training initiative for the Centre for Leadership in the Ontario public service. Professor Shields has been past Program Coordinator for the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Public Administration and currently is a member of the Management Co-ordination Team for the Certificate in Interdisciplinary Studies in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. He holds/held research affiliations with the Centre for Governance Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby; the Centre for Voluntary Sector Studies, Faculty of Business, Toronto Metropolitan University; the International Social Sciences Institute at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and CERIS - The Ontario Metropolis Centre (Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement). He has served on various advisory bodies including the Research Advisory Group for the Ontario Association of Youth Employment Centres.

Professor Shields is also a member of the Yeates School of Graduate Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is co-Director of the MA program in Public Policy and Administration, and is also part of the Joint (with York University) Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture, which offers both MA and Ph.D streams as well as the Masters program in Immigration and Settlement Studies and the PhD program in Policy Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University.

He has numerous academic distinctions including major academic research awards, a Research Professorship from Toronto Metropolitan University and was awarded t he Sarwan Sahota Toronto Metropolitan University Distinguished Scholar Award for 2001 . In 2010 he was named a CERIS Senior Scholar by the SSHRC Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS - The Ontario Metropolis Centre).

Dr. Shields has published extensively in the area of Canadian public administration and public policy including the co-authoring of four books and over thirty published articles and papers. His most recent research explores alternative service delivery and partnerships between government and the third sector, public administration reform, labour market restructuring with a focus on contingent work and immigrant populations, and knowledge transfer in support of public policy and advocacy.

During the 1993-1994 academic year Professor Shields was involved in a job exchange relationship with the Ontario Ministry of Labour where he served as a Policy Advisor for the Employment Conditions & Labour Market Policy Branch. Since that time he has maintained close contact with the Ontario Public Service. He has conducted contract work for the Ontario Ministry of Labour and the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities, and been a frequent guest speaker for the Ontario Public Service — he has given talks for the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Ontario Ministry of Health, Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services and the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board regarding changing public policy trends.

Dr. Shields has most recently been appointed as the Managing Editor of the Journal of International Migration & Integration / Revue de l'integration et de la migration internationale (JIMI), which is a peer reviewed, international journal focused on publishing policy-relevant articles related to immigration, settlement and integration. The journal is published by Springer (Netherlands).

Professor Shields is regularly sought as a media commentator and has been interviewed by and appeared on/in CBC, OnTV, CTV, Montreal Gazette, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, National Post, Hamilton Spectator, Maclean's, OMNI TV, among others.

With Drs. Bryan Evans and Janet Lum, John Shields produces the Toronto Metropolitan University Policy Capacity Report.


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