September 29, 2016: IRES Faculty Seminar
Speaker: Peter Klein

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

Hidden Costs of Global Supply Chains

Abstract:  The world is increasingly interconnected through global supply chains. Trillions of dollars a year of merchandise travel across oceans and continents, linking low cost manufacturers from the global South to large discount-driven consumer markets in the North. While the economic benefits are measured and appreciated, the environmental and social costs are distanced, unaccounted for and growing. At the Global Reporting Centre we have been reporting on various aspects of global supply chains: from the sources of timber, to the environmental effects of shrimp farming, to the path of electronic waste exports to developing countries. We have brought together leading scholars at UBC and around the world, to collaborate with Emmy- and Pulitzer-winning journalists, to embark on an ambitious research project Hidden Costs of Global Supply Chains. Prof. Klein will be presenting some of the findings of this research, and will shows part of the award-winning journalist projects that have come from the project, including a New York Times series, a Toronto Star documentary and a PBS Frontline film that earned an Emmy for Best Investigation.

 

Pen

Photo credit: Pete O’Shea from flickr/Creative Commons

 

Bio:  Peter W. Klein is the founder of the Global Reporting Centre, a non-profit focused on producing and innovating journalism on under-reported issues around the world. He is former director of the University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where he continues to teach the International Reporting course, in which his students spend a year reporting on a global topic and partnering with major media. He was a longtime producer at CBS News 60 Minutes, and is a regular opinion contributor to The Globe & Mail. He is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including several Emmy, Murrow and Sigma Delta Chi awards. He has an MS in Journalism from Columbia, and lives in Vancouver, Canada, with his wife and four children.