Thank you, Meg; welcome Anthony!

The Urban Studies Program is pleased to welcome back professor Anthony Perl as its new program director starting September 1, 2021. Anthony replaces professor Meg Holden, whose three-year term as director ended in August. We thank Meg for her considerable contributions during her directorship. Some of her most notable contributions have been the renovation of the program’s office and student space in the Harbour Centre skybridge, the Pandemonium webinar series, the Temporarily Urbane podcast, the inauguration of new courses in professional development, international field studies, and decolonizing urban studies, as well as a mentorship pilot project. Also notable is her co-creation of a new, team-taught laboratory-style special topics course called “Vancouver Ideas Book,” which allowed students to investigate possibilities for the City of Vancouver’s in-progress citywide plan. Meg also saw the program through its emergency transition to remote learning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, as well as preparations to return to campus this fall. Meanwhile, she has continued to teach, mentor and supervise many students and maintained an active research program.

Anthony’s term as director is his second, after serving as the program’s first full-time director from 2005-2012. He teaches courses in urban transportation, public policy and global cities, and is frequently sought by media to comment on those topics. His most recent book, Big Moves: Global Agendas, Local Aspirations, and Urban Mobility Canada, was published in 2020 by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Even more recently, he has researched and published on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on public transit, and on the effects of transit subsidies on the commuting choices of hotel workers. He is a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute and an adjunct professor at the Cities Research Institute of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Locally, he has volunteered his time serving on the City of Vancouver’s planning commission.

Anthony is jointly appointed as professor of Urban Studies and Political Science. Before joining SFU, he worked at the University of Calgary, the City University of New York, and Universite Lumiere in Lyon, France.