Dr. Dan Cohen
Associate Professor
PhD, University of British Columbia
Department of Geography and Planning
91TV's University
I am a critical economic and urban geographer with a mix of academic and professional experience and a specific focus on the role of finance in everyday life. My work has been published in leading geography journals such as Progress in Human Geography, the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Urban Geography, Geoforum, and the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society.
Prior to my employment at 91TV's, I worked as an urban planner and policy researcher in both the private sector and for the City of Toronto. Based on this experience I developed a research interest in how the increasing power of finance and market-based policies are shaping the social systems that people rely upon for the necessities of life.
My research projects have largely focused on the Canadian financial system and spatialized inequality. From 2020 to 2023 I completed a project on Canada's Social Finance Fund, examining how the fund evolved through the policymaking process and the power dynamics which shape how the investments in the fund help define the 'social good'. From 2023 onward I have been leading a SSHRC Insight grant on the spatial politics of monetary policy in Canada and how quantitative easing programs shaped the post-COVID recovery.
My emerging research projects include the use of location data as an input into economic processes, most specifically the growth of surveillance pricing practices. I am also part of a SSHRC Insight grant looking at the role of consultants in shaping the higher education sector.
Credentials
B.A. (University of Toronto)
M.Sc. Pl (University of Toronto)
PhD (University of British Columbia)
Research Interests
My research interests are focused in economic and financial geography, specifically the role of markets in shaping important urban, social, and economic systems that shape people's everyday lives.
Using a political economic approach, my past and current research projects have critically examined our increasing reliance on market systems of service provision to plan the delivery of public goods and on the role of financial systems in producing spatialized inequality. Through doing so, I explore how geographic factors such as place-based political struggles and the circulation of financial capital shape the ways that markets evolve and function.
Student Supervision
I am interested in work with students with research interests in the critical study of markets/finance, surveillance pricing, geographies of education, and urban policy and philanthropy from a variety of perspectives (political economy, critical race theory, etc.).