Event Date: March 24, 2026 - 11:30am to 1:00pm
Location: FSS 4006, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS and the International Political Economy Network (IPEN)

The free-market ideological project known, mostly by critics, as “neoliberalism” has been declared dead before. But once again, prominent commentators are reading the last rites. There is no shortage of indications: Trump’s tariffs and the return of protectionism, repudiations of globalism, “the China model,” resurgent nationalisms, so-called state capitalism, and a host of other morbid symptoms. Did late neoliberalism just pass into post-neoliberalism? Maybe it is finally time to consign this generally unloved idea, and the associated bundle of policies, projects, and governing principles, to the dustbin of history? Some continue to say that it is still too early to tell. But with neoliberalism once again at death’s door, maybe we are now in a position to make sense of how it lived—as a hegemonic project and strong discourse, as a program never willing to speak its own name, and as one of the most divisive concepts in the social sciences.

Speaker:

Jamie Peck, FRSC, FBA, FAcSS is University Killam Professor, Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. With long-term research interests in economic geography, urban and regional studies, and institutional political economy, he is the author most recently of Variegated economies (2023, Oxford).

Chair:

Jacqueline Best is a Full Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research is at the intersection of international relations, political economy and social theory. Her current research examines the role of exceptionalism, failure, and ignorance in economic policy, tracing their evolution from the early days of neoliberalism to today.