Link to a head shot and short bio.
Dr. Paul Kershaw is a farmer morning and night. By day, he is an academic, public speaker and media contributor. In these latter roles, Kershaw is one of Canada’s leading thinkers about caregiving and family policy, receiving two national prizes from the Canadian Political Science Association for his research. Kershaw’s numerous publications show that caring family policy is important for social justice, gender equality, population health and economic growth.
Dr. Kershaw uses research to be a cheer-leader and critic of Canadians with the intention of inspiring substantial policy change across the country. Dubbed by some an ‘Evangelist Professor’, Kershaw is a provocative and inspiring public speaker who can help even the most numbers-phobic see that data reveal a gap between Canadian’s aspirations and our actual accomplishments. A primary gap on which Kershaw currently focuses is the misperception that Canadians are strong at supporting mothers and fathers to care for young children. We’re not. UNICEF and the OECD rank Canada as an international laggard in terms of family policy, while a recent poll shows that nearly 90% of British Columbians don’t know this.
Dr. Kershaw is regularly consulted by government decision-makers. When evaluating policy, Kershaw makes clear that the entire citizenry shares responsibility for our successes and failures. He insists that we must be careful before critiquing political leaders for not acting when many voters are silent on an issue. In response, Kershaw devotes time to liaising with leaders in the business and not-for-profit sectors in order to rally interest about social and economic issues that currently receive too little public attention, but which matter for our bottom lines when measured both as GDP and Quality of Life.
Kershaw does not shy away from tough issues. On radio he has been labeled a “Boomer-hater” because he speaks about intergenerational inequities between babyboomers and the generations that follow. In the academy, he is a proud feminist, chiding the personal and policy decisions by which many men evade their fair share of caregiving work, and fail to enjoy a fair share of the joys that come with caring. Among the general public, he argues 
that ‘Being Canadian’ is making us sick, because the medical system in which we take national pride shows more of a disease fetish than an aspiration to promote health.
At the University of British Columbia, Kershaw is the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) Scholar of Social Care, Citizenship and the Determinants of Health. He coordinates social policy data collection in 20 OECD countries, and all 10 Canadian provinces. The research is enabling Canadians from coast to coast to evaluate our family policies relative to those in other affluent societies. With these data, Kershaw and colleagues are estimating how much investment is required to fix family policy across Canada, and provide a detailed account of the short- and long-term benefits of doing so.
Dr. Kershaw resides at Homecoming Farm in Katzie Territory, Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada. He raises horses, local food (and too many weeds!), living happily ever after with his inspiring partner, Andrea Long.
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