Professor John Robinson will be starting a new position at the University of Toronto, beginning January 1, 2016. In his farewell letter to the Geography community, he writes:
“…I have accepted a job at the University of Toronto (51% in the Munk School and 49% in the School of the Environment), which I will be starting in Jan, 2016. I am leaving because my wife has taken a job at U of T and it was her turn to pick our location (she came with me to Vancouver in 1992).
My job at UBC has been a dream come true, for a number of reasons. Not many people, I think, get to try to apply their thoughts and theories of institutional and social change to the institution they work in, and this has been an incredible experience for me. I have also greatly appreciated the opportunity to be part of the Geography department, and to be surrounded by so many outstanding scholars and colleagues.
I will retain some connections to UBC as I continue to supervise 9 students in RMES. At U of T, I want to work on an idea we had from the beginning of CIRS, but have not been able to get to: the replication of the regenerative sustainability and living lab concepts in other developments around the world. To that end, I am now an Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, where I have been asked to lead the sustainability component of their major campus redevelopment project; I am exploring similar options with Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg and KTH in Stockholm; I am working with David Maggs on developing a park-scale living lab in Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland; and am in discussions with several other like-minded projects. And of course U of T itself, which is behind on the sustainability front, should be doing a lot more along these lines.”
