Mark Crawford

Biography

Welcome. I joined the faculty of Athabasca University in January 2007 as an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Program. I was born in New Westminster, B.C. and went on to graduate from the University of British Columbia with a B.A. (Hons.) in Political Science, and later received a LL.B. from the University of Toronto and both a M.Phil and a D.Phil. in Politics from the University of Oxford. I was a Rhodes Scholar, a Parliamentary Intern and a SSHRC Doctoral Scholar, and worked about five years in the public sector before finally embarking upon an academic career in 2002.

Research Interest

My research agenda draws upon this varied background and builds around three of the great fault-lines of politics within advanced liberal democracies in the early twenty-first century. First, the intersection between the global and the domestic; second, the tension between an activated, post-materialist and increasingly plural citizenry and the growing constraints of neoliberal rules, policies and institutions; and third, the contradiction between the triumph of liberal capitalism and its attendant externalities, market failures and collective action problems. In the context of Canada, this has meant focusing on the developing ideas around Canadian constitutionalism, political identity and citizenship, as well as evolving debates concerning the future of health care, social policy, and the welfare state in a globalizing world.