In October, Alison Griffith (together with co-applicant Dorothy E Smith) will hold a 3-day invited workshop entitled Governance and the Front Line, which is sponsored by SSHRC with $16,363. This interdisciplinary workshop will bring together Canadian and international, experienced and novice researchers, as well as practitioners such as nurses, social workers, and urban planners. Participants will explore governance across the range of institutional and organizational settings (schools, hospitals, secondary education institutions, international aid, and social work) that make up the ‘public sector’ of the economy. As economic turmoil affects public institutions, researchers from different academic and professional disciplines in Canada, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries are finding increasing evidence of strong similarities in the management, accountability, and financial processes across disciplinary, national and international boundaries. Participants at this workshop will share their research into these new forms of governance, and an edited volume “New Governance and the Front-line” will be published.