Rick Halpern is the Dean and Vice-Principal at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is a specialist in modern U.S. history, and has written extensively on race and labour in a number of national and transnational contexts. He earned his BA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and his MA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Upon completion of his doctorate in 1989, he joined the Department of History, University College London as a Lecturer and was later promoted to Reader. He joined the University of Toronto in 2001 as the first Bissell-Heyd Professor of American Studies in the Department of History. Following terms as Associate Director and then Acting Director, Professor Halpern served as Director of the Centre for the Study of the United States at the Munk Centre for International Studies from 2004 to 2006. He is a Senior Fellow at Massey College, and from 2006 to 2009 served as Principal of New College. Currently he is working on studies of diasporic foodways in Canada, working class culture and politics in 1919 Chicago, and documentary photography in apartheid era South Africa.