The 2025 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture was held on Tuesday, May 20th in partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Arts.
A special thanks to TMU Interim Dean of Arts Amy Peng for hosting this Broadbent Institute event.
Ellen Meiksins Wood was one of the left’s foremost theorists on democracy and history, and often promoted the idea that democracy always has to be fought for and secured from below, never benevolently conferred from above.
The Institute founded the annual Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize & Lecture to honour Professor Wood’s legacy as an internationally renowned scholar and to bring her work to new generations of Canadians.
The Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize is given annually to an academic, labour activist or writer and recognizes outstanding contributions in political theory, social or economic history, human rights, or sociology.
Each year’s recipient also delivers the Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture.
The 2025 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture was delivered by Grace Blakeley.
She is awarded the 2025 Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize in recognition of her critical analysis of economic systems and neoliberal capitalism that helps movements take back democratic power for the working-class.
Her lecture, entitled Genuine Democracy in an Age of Hyper-Individualism, illustrates why neoliberal capitalism has overruled democracy and why we must organize to take back democratic power for the working-class.
The lecture is a visionary take on what is needed to re-invigorate left-wing electoral politics in Canada and around the world, and is a useful tool for Canadian progressives in finding our approach to face today’s political challenges through organizing.
Click here for our gallery of photos from the event.
Read the full lecture in Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy.