Joseph Burton, MPhil, Senior Research Manager, is a PhD candidate, researcher, and educator with expertise in the fields of history and sociological analysis, with emphasis on democratic governance, economic development, and the self-organization of working-class and historically marginalized communities.

Joseph specializes in qualitative analysis and research and is adept at mining primary and secondary literatures to assess change over time and draw clear and impactful conclusions for diverse clients. As a trained labour historian, he also excels in the use of quantitative workforce modeling tools such as shift share and location quotient and in distilling actionable insights related to workforce and community readiness from large data sets.

Beyond desktop and archival research, Joseph enjoys and excels in collaborative research tasks as an engagement facilitator. As a consultant and former sessional instructor in academia, Joseph has a deep experience navigating complex issues through productive dialogue. Through his project work he has engaged and learned from innovators in municipal politics, recreation, tourism, and economic development, as well as from Indigenous community members and leaders across Mi’kma’ki.

His project work in this respect covers many different themes, including population and community readiness, economic impact analysis, Foreign Direct Investment attraction, labour market analysis, and others. He is currently leading a sector analysis of travel and tourism in Nova Scotia as part of an effort to develop a Cultural Tourism Strategy for the Town of Lunenburg and to support the South Shore’s ongoing post COVID revitalization.

Joseph holds a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Political and Economic Sociology from the University of Cambridge, and he is currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Simon Fraser University, where he is researching the changing dynamics and composition of the labour movement in North America during the middle twentieth century.