Mara Fridell

• SOC 3380 - Power, Politics, and the State
• SOC 4450 - Honours Seminar in Sociology
• SOC 4560 - Advanced Sociological Theory
• SOC 7440 - Contemporary Sociological Theory

Dr. Fridell teaches and researches in sociological, social, historical-materialist and ecological theory, as well as Political Sociology and Political Economy. Combining background education, fellowships, leadership and research in Sociology and ecology, Dr. Fridell brings a comparativist Social Reproduction lens to study policy and politics. With U.S. National Science Foundation, Fulbright Foundation and Canadian SSHRC (including the Manitoba Research Alliance) funding, she has used multi-method approaches to study the community politics of nuclear waste siting on an American Indigenous reservation, Complex Ecology, Rural Sociology, immigration politics and policy in Sweden, rural and urban Indigenous health in Treaty One territory, Fair Trade decommodification, feminist political-economic literacy organizing in Manitoba, inequality, Austerity and comparative provincial policy outcomes. Complementing her three decades of social and ecological theory study, Dr. Fridell today researches the comparative, international context and outcomes of theory development, including comparativist studies of mass higher education origins and development, science politics and Enlightenment-Counterenlightenment-Antienlightenment ideas, academics, politics and policy. At the University of Manitoba, Dr. Fridell teaches courses in theory, the Honours research thesis, feminism and Political Sociology and Social Movements, and has supervised and supported Honours and graduate students studying a wide range of important contemporary dynamics, including housing policy. 

• PhD (Sociology), University of Oregon, 2007
• MA (Sociology), University of New Mexico, 1998
• BA (English), Hamline University, 1991

Research interests

• Sociology of science
• Enlightenment, Counterenlightenment and Antienlightenment ideas
• Comparative policy, politics, institutions and infrastructure
• Social reproduction
• Inequality

Research summary

Within the framework of geopolitics and political economy, Dr. Fridell researches the contextualized comparative development of science, theory and inequality through Enlightenment, Counterenlightenment and Antienlightenment ideas, politics, policies and institutions.

Research affiliations

• Co-Investigator, 2021-2025. “Strengthening Unpaid Carework in Canada’s Social Welfare State,” SSHRC Insight grant. Laura Funk, PI. $430,000.
• Investigator, M. Fridell. 2020-2027. Community-Driven Solutions to Poverty: Challenges and Solutions SSHRC Partnership grant, $2.5 million, John Loxley, PI.
• Investigator, M. Fridell. 2020-2024. Cosmopolitan Consumption, Culture, and Markets in Canadian Society SSHRC Insight grant, $88,000, Sonia Bookman, PI.

• Fridell, M. 2024 (forthcoming). "Terra Nullis: Regional Universities & their Communities." In Colleges and Their Communities, edited by Allison Hurst and Carmel Price. Routledge International Handbook series.
• Fridell, M. 2024 (forthcoming). “Austerity v. Manitoba Women.” In Public Service in Tough Times: Working Under Austerity in Manitoba, edited by Jesse Hajer. University of Manitoba Press. 
• Fridell, M., M. Hudson & I. Hudson. 2021. "Uneven Outcomes: The Tensions, Contradictions, and Challenges of the Search for Fairtrade," Chapter in Gavin Fridell & Zack Gross, eds. The Essential Guide to Fair Trade in Canada and Beyond. Fernwood.
• Das, A., M. Fridell, M. Hudson, & I. Hudson. 2019. ”Do Governments Matter? Provincial Policy and Redistribution in Two Canadian Provinces, 1990-2010.” Review of Social Economy, 21 May.
• Fridell, M, I Hudson, M Hudson, and E Regier. 2018. “Provincial support for CED in Manitoba: The experience of CED Practitioners.” Winnipeg: CCPA Manitoba Research Report.
• Fridell, M. 2017. “The Social-democratic Small-state Strategy and Immigration: Sweden in the 21st Century.” World Review of Political Economy 8(3): 390-415.
• Fridell, M. 2016. “Our Dead Labour and Its Rentiers.” Socialist Studies 11 (1) Winter: 205-209.
• Fridell, M. 2014. “A Review of Mark Blyth’s ‘Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.’” Labour/Le Travail 74: 342-43.
• 2014. Fridell, M. and L. Turnbull. 2014. “Resilient Feminism: Social Movement Strategy in a Conservative Regnum.” Pp. 243-255 in Counting on Marilyn Waring: New Advances in Feminist Economics, edited by M. Bjornholt and A. McKay. Ontario: Demeter Press.
• Hudson, I., M. Hudson, and M. Fridell. 2013. Fair Trade, Sustainability and Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan (Basingstoke, UK).

• President of The Society for Socialist Studies (SSS), 2023-present.
• Principal Investigator, 2021-2022. “Capacitating and Integrating EDI,” in partnership with the City of Winnipeg, funded by Mitacs. $45,000.
• Interviewed by Faith Fundal, on findings from Fridell, M. 2022. “We 8 Billions” demography and inequality report. “Up To Speed,” CBC, November 15, 2022.
• Interviewed by Angela Lovell for article “Women on the Home Front,” Country Guide, February 15, 2022.
• President, the Working Class Academics section of the international Working Class Studies Association, 2017-2018. President-elect, the Working Class Academics section of the Working Class Studies Association, 2016-2017. 
• Presented findings from “Resilient Feminism: Social Movement Strategy in a Conservative Regnum,” at the June 17, 2014 UNPAC AGM and Report to the Community, Winnipeg.