Dr. Dimitry Anastakis, history professor and chair of Canadian Studies at Trent University, has been awarded the Hagley Prize, an international award given annually to the best book in business history by the Business History Conference and the Hagley Museum and Library of Wilmington, Delaware. Autonomous State: The Struggle for a Canadian Car Industry from OPEC to Free Trade is an examination of public policy and business enterprise that highlights various facets of the Canadian automotive industry’s evolution within national, continental and global contexts.
Dr. Joan Sangster, director of the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies, noted that this important honour reflects the international stature of research done by faculty at Trent University’s Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies, and in particular Professor Anastakis’ critical intervention in transnational debates about economic policy.
“I am delighted that my book received this award, which is one of the most important in the business history field,” said Prof. Anastakis, who has been at Trent since 2004. “It is particularly humbling to be the first Canadian scholar to win this prestigious international award. So many previous recipients are leading scholars in the business history field, so I am honoured to have been chosen.”
Announced at the Business History Conference’s annual meeting, held this year in Frankfurt, Germany on March 15, the award includes a medallion and $2,500. Professor Anastakis was a co-recipient with one other author, chosen from a field of 89 entries. The prize committee encouraged the submission of books from all methodological perspectives, and in making its decision, was “particularly interested in innovative studies with the potential to expand the boundaries of the discipline.”
Autonomous State is Dr. Anastakis’s sixth book. His first book, Auto Pact: Creating a Borderless North American Auto Industry, 1960-71, published in 2005 won the 2008 J.J. Talman Award as the best book on Ontario’s history published in the previous three years. His most recent book, Smart Globalization: The Canadian Business and Economic History Experience, is a co-edited collection with Professor Andrew Smith of the University of Liverpool Business School. Dr. Anastakis’s next book, Death in the Peaceable Kingdom: Canadian History through Murder, Execution, Assassination and Suicide, will be published in 2015 and is based on his Trent University second-year course of the same name.
Posted on Friday, March 21, 2014.