Greg Allain, professor of sociology at Université de Moncton, was elected president of CAUT at the April Council meeting. Allain succeeds Loretta Czernis, who continues as past president.

Before taking over the president’s duties, Allain served on CAUT’s executive committee for six years, twice as a member-at-large and chair of the executive committee on contract academic staff, then as treasurer for three years, and last year as vice-president and concurrently chair of the executive committee on francophone issues.

He earlier served four years as president of his local academic staff association, ABPPUM. Allain says his proudest moment came following difficult negotiations in 2000. “That year, we went on strike — our first walkout in the history of the university — over salary parity with New Brunswick’s anglophone universities and improvements in workload provisions. We made significant gains and it was an incredible experience of solidarity for our members.”

Professionally, Allain’s teaching and research interests include francophone minorities in Canada, Acadian society, regional development and trade union and higher education issues. Since 2001, he has coauthored three books on Acadian communities in urban settings in New Brunswick. He has also written a history of his local union. He has published some 40 refereed articles and book chapters, edited four journal issues and spearheaded four annual meetings of the Réseau de la recherche sur la francophonie canadienne, held during annual conventions of the Association francophone pour le savoir (the francophone equivalent of the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities).

A long term resident of Dieppe, New Brunswick, and fluently bilingual, Allain holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara, a master’s degree in sociology from Université Laval and a master’s in philosophy from Université de Montréal. Allain and his wife Isabelle McKee, also a sociologist, have a daughter, Mélanie, a lawyer and policy analyst for the New Brunswick government, and a son, Dominic, chief pediatric resident at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton.