Dean, Faculty of Arts & Science
Professor of Geography
Goldring Chair in Canadian Studies

Professor Meric 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.

Professor Gertler was named dean of the University of Toronto’s largest and most diverse academic division, the Faculty of Arts & Science, on December 1, 2008 for an appointment that will run until June 30, 2014. 

As dean, his priority is to provide students with a top quality academic experience in which they benefit directly from U of T’s strength and diversity in research and teaching. Since his term began, undergraduate education in the Faculty of Arts & Science has undergone a fundamental transformation. Today’s curriculum has a renewed emphasis on breadth in preparing global citizens and ensuring all students graduate with core competencies in critical thinking, writing, quantitative reasoning, problem solving and ethical awareness. He has also focused on significantly increasing the number and range of research and international academic opportunities for Arts & Science students.

Before becoming dean, Professor Gertler was vice-dean, graduate education and research in the Faculty, where he led the division’s ambitious graduate expansion plans, established governance mechanisms for graduate education and played a key role in U of T’s tri-campus graduate curriculum committee.

Internationally renowned as a distinguished scholar, Professor Gertler’s research focuses on the geography of innovative activity and the economies of city-regions. He has been a frequent advisor to government agencies at all levels, both in Canada and abroad, as well as to multilateral organizations such as the European Union and the OECD. He was the founding co-director of the Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems (PROGRIS) at the Munk School of Global Affairs and has also served as director of the Department of Geography’s Program in Planning.

His research has attracted $8.4 million in external funding and he has published six books including Manufacturing Culture: the Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice and Innovation and Social Learning, co-edited with Professor David Wolfe.

Professor Gertler’s more than 80 journal articles and book chapters have had significant impact in his field and have led him to be one of Canada’s most highly cited geographers. He is co-editor of the widely used Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography, winner of Choice Magazine’s “Outstanding Academic Book” award. He has held visiting appointments at Oxford University, University College London, UCLA, and the University of Oslo. He won the 2007 Award for Scholarly Distinction from the Canadian Association of Geographers. In May 2012, he will be awarded an honorary doctor of philosophy from Lund University, Sweden for his exceptional contributions to the fields of economic geography and regional development.