Jason Spicer, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College at the City University of New York (CUNY) and in the Social Welfare PhD program at the Graduate School and University Center (the Graduate Center) at CUNY. He was previously an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, where he was the founder and director of the Community Economies Lab. His work has been published in a number of leading social science journals and featured in media outlets such as The Washington Post, PBS Newshour, The Conversation, CBC, Governance, Grist, Fast Company, and Foreign Policy.
Before becoming a professor, Jason had a 15-year career in the global urban development industry, based in New York City, working with local, national, and trans-national government, private sector, and third-sector organizations in a variety of capacities.
His research and teaching focus on the relationship between politics and the economy at multiple spatial scales, from the local to the trans-national. He primarily studies: (a) the potential of alternative economic models, such as cooperatives and social and solidarity economy organizational forms, to create a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable economy; and (b) the role policy and political processes play in conditioning the viability of alternative economic arrangements in different contexts.
Topics and themes: social and community entrepreneurship; cooperatives, alternative enterprises, and the social economy;
economic democracy; institutions and organizations; housing and community economic development; social movements; international and comparative political economy.