Partnership Award Winner

Carla Lipsig-Mummé

Work and Labour Studies
York University

The SSHRC Impact Award that I’ve won today encapsulates the ways in which SSHRC opens doors for research and makes it possible for young researchers to broaden and deepen their work and their goals.

This way of working—use the unsolved questions arising in a finishing project to define and shape the next project—was made possible by SSHRC and has shaped my work through my long career.

Biography

Carla Lipsig-Mummé is a professor in York University’s Work and Labour Studies program, and was founding director of the university’s Centre for Research on Work and Society. She came to York from Université Laval, where she was a tenured professor in the university’s industrial relations department. 

Her pioneering research has highlighted workplaces and labour unions—particularly in developed countries—as climate change linchpins. In industrialized countries, workplaces and work produce 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions created by human activity.

Lipsig-Mummé’s extensive contributions to labour and the environment have earned her widespread international recognition, including the Sefton-Williams Award for Contributions to Labour Relations in 2018.

She has advised policy-makers and labour and industry stakeholders around the world. Her research partnerships have involved academics, labour unions, environmental groups, government scientists, legal professionals, students and others in Canada, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia.

Her partnerships have also led to large-scale, publicly accessible databases of successful labour-management agreements for collaboration on reducing the production of greenhouse gas emissions. One of these was profiled twice by the United Nations.

Author of more than 200 works, Lipsig-Mummé is a frequent commentator in national and international media. She has been the principal investigator on 46 grants to date, 28 of which were funded by SSHRC.