Gideon Strauss

Professional headshot of Gideon Strauss

Academic Dean

Associate Professor of Leadership and Worldview Studies

Contact Me:

gstrauss@icscanada.edu

416-979-2331 x240

Something Worth Considering...

"There is no short-term wisdom." 

Léon Krier

About My Work

I think about the stories we humans tell to account for what we do in terms of what we want. 


Or, to slightly paraphrase my official position description: As Associate Professor of Leadership and Worldview Studies I teach, do research, and serve the wider community in, and at the intersection of, the fields of leadership and worldview studies, with an interdisciplinary approach that attends, specifically, to phenomenological and ethnographic methods of inquiry—and in particular to what I call narrative practice studies. I prioritize equipping students for the praxis (that is, the theoretically informed reflective practice) of leadership as cultural contribution.

Most of my students are participants in the Educational Leadership stream in ICS’s MA program. I mentor students who emphasize school administration in their studies, and I regularly teach the following courses:

My current research interests are focused on the methodology of narrative practice studies, the application of narrative practice studies to the practices of teaching and school administration, the application of narrative practice studies to the study of the relationship between ethics and politics, and the ontological and epistemological conditions for narrative practice studies.

I’d love to talk with you if you want to come and study with us at the Institute for Christian Studies or if you are interested in my research!  Email me at gstrauss@icscanada.edu so we can correspond or set up an online video or phone conversation.

For a little more, see my (not very active) Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Research Foci

Biography

Gideon Strauss, PhD

Academic Dean 

Associate Professor of Leadership and Worldview Studies

BA, MA, PhD (University of the Orange Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa)

Gideon had served three-and-a-half years of a six-year community service sentence as a conscientious objector to military conscription under the apartheid regime in South Africa when conscription was abolished in 1990, at the start of the negotiations for a democratic South Africa. Upon completion of his PhD in 1995 he was appointed as a policy researcher at his alma mater, in which capacity he also worked as an interpreter for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA TRC) during 1996 and 1997.

In part to process his experience working for the SA TRC, Gideon studied with Eugene Peterson and Jim Packer at Regent College (Vancouver, Canada) in 1998 and 1999. In 1999 he was recruited to work as the Research and Education Director of the Christian Labour Association of Canada and as the editor of the journal Comment (of the Work Research Foundation, later renamed as Cardus), in which positions he continued until 2009. 

From 2009 to 2011 Gideon served as the CEO of the Center for Public Justice (Washington, DC) and from 2012 to 2014 as Associate Professor of Leadership and Executive Director of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, California).

Gideon started teaching at ICS in 2015 and was appointed as Academic Dean in 2018. 

Publications

Books

Academic Articles

Book Reviews

Files

Teaching

Courses and Syllabi

Mentoring and Academic Advising