Deborah Leslie is an associated faculty member and serves on the Advisory Council of the Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods. She is appointed to the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto and teaches courses on economic geography, labour geography, feminist geography and the cultural economy.
Her recent research is on the social economy. In particular, she is researching Work Integration Social Enterprises and the role they play in integrating marginalized workers into the labour force in Toronto and Montreal. Deborah is also conducting research on craft work, and on practices of commoning, collectivity and care in the craft sector. Her work concerns precarious work in cultural industries and on gendered and racial inequalities in this work.
In addition to work on labour, Deborah is interested on urban cultural policies, the shift towards neoliberal regimes of urban governance and urban economic development policies designed to foster creativity. The spatial and temporal logic of commodity chains and networks, and ethical issues surrounding consumption, has also been a focus of her work.
