Alexandra Gillespie is vice-president and principal at U of T Mississauga. The first woman appointed to this position, in July 2020, Alex champions inclusive excellence in a way that has defined her career for the past two decades.
After completing her BA in English at Victoria University in her native Aotearoa - New Zealand, Alex attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, where she earned an MSt and DPhil. She went on to postdoctoral fellowships at Balliol College, Oxford, and Darwin College, Cambridge, before joining UTM in 2004.
Since then, she has championed public education for the public good, both as a professor of global book history and as a leader across U of T. Alex’s classes – recognized in 2010 with UTM’s highest teaching award – turn interpretation into a shared activity, in which the play of different student perspectives produces meanings richer than any one person could imagine alone.
This commitment to collaboration shapes her administrative work, too. With partners across the university, Alex has built thriving communities as chair of UTM’s department of English and drama; as an early member of Toronto’s initiative for diversity and excellence; as the first director of U of T’s Digital Humanities Network; and as UTM’s first vice-presidential special advisor in research.
Alex’s own research combines tradition with innovation, old books with new scientific technologies. Her expertise ranges from Middle English poetry to micro-CT scanning. In more than sixty articles and six edited volumes, her scholarship continues to change what it means to read the past in a book.
She also continues to change the structure of humanities research as director of the Old Books New Science Lab, which connects graduate students, faculty and librarians, and community partners in the shared pursuit of historical knowledge. The lab’s current project – Hidden Stories, generously funded by the Mellon Foundation -- brings together more than 130 collaborators from 60 institutions to develop new understandings of premodern books through their material, cultural, and ecological relations.
In each case, Alex is animated by U of T’s promise as one of the world’s most inclusive great universities. She loves to be part of a community where talented, curious people – from every background and field – share knowledge that lifts our students and moves our world.
