PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO TO GIVE 2017 EATON LECTURE AT QUEEN'S 

02 March 2017

The Chief Executives’ Club at Queen’s, together with the Centre of Canadian Studies within the University’s School of Natural and Built Environment, will welcome Professor Meric Gertler, President Meric Gertler, PhD, FRSC, FAcSS, FBA, MCIP, President of the University of Toronto, to deliver this year’s Eaton Lecture.

Entitled Universities and Urban Regions: A Partnership for Prosperity, the annual lecture will take place on Thursday 23rd March 2017 (5.30pm-8.00pm), in the Great Hall at Queen’s.

Welcoming guests to the University will be Professor Patrick G Johnston, President and Vice-Chancellor, and proceedings will be compered by the Queen’s triple graduate, BBC broadcaster and widely respected journalist, William Crawley.

Professor Gertler will discuss how urban regions are emerging as drivers of national and international prosperity; and sources of creativity, entrepreneurship, innovation and resiliency. He will explore the role of universities in leading this urban dynamism and bringing long-term stability to their host regions whilst also connecting these places to the wider world. 

After his address, Professor Gertler will be joined by a panel of esteemed local and international experts, to debate the key issues. The panel members include Professor Björn Asheim, Lund University, Sweden; Ms Suzanne Wylie, Belfast City Council; Professor Kevin Morgan, Cardiff University; Dr Linda Fox-Rogers School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s and Dr Joanne Stuart, Catalyst NI.

The Eaton Lecture is supported by an endowment from the Eaton Foundation in Toronto. The series of annual lectures is designed to cement connections between the University and Canada through the University's Centre of Canadian Studies, by bringing eminent Canadians to Belfast. Past speakers have included the former Canadian politician Bill Blaikie, and Dr Fred Eaton, an honorary graduate of Queen’s, whose great-grandfather Timothy, who was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, founded Eaton's department store in Toronto 1869.

Professor Gertler is one of the world’s foremost urban theorists and policy practitioners. He is widely known as an expert on innovation, creativity and culture as drivers of the economic dynamism of city-regions. On November 1, 2013, Professor Gertler began his term as the 16th President of the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the geography of innovative activity and the economies of city-regions.

Among his publications are the co-edited Manufacturing Culture: the Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice, and Innovation and Social Learning, and the widely used Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography, as well as more than 80 journal articles and book chapters.

Further details are available from Dolores Vischer, Business Engagement Manager, Marketing, Recruitment, Communications and Internationalisation Directorate at Queen’s tel: +44 (0)28 9097 2573 (part-time, Mon-Wed), or Brenda Carabine, tel: +44 (0)28 9097 1153.

 Media inquiries to Gerry Power, Communications Officer, Development and Alumni Relations Office at Queen’s; tel: +44 (0)28 9097 5321.

 

Back to Main News

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

           

Top of Page