Craig Heron is a Canadian social historian and public intellectual with a broad interest in labour and cultural history.
Hobsbawm, Herbert Gutman, David Montgomery and others outside Canada who promoted a "new labour history" to address the multiple dimensions of the working-class experience.
With sociologist Robert Storey of McMaster University, he co-edited a collection of workplace studies, On the Job: Confronting the Labour Process in Canada, with subjects ranging from early printers and railway workers to fast food and assembly line workers.
In 2015, he published Lunch-Bucket Lives: Remaking the Workers' City, an exploration of working-class life in Hamilton, Ontario in the early twentieth century.
"[3] His most recent book, published in 2018 under the title Working Lives: Essays in Canadian Working-Class History, is a collection of his articles in the field.
In administrative work, Heron assisted in creating York's programs in Labour Studies and also in Public History.
Beyond the university, Heron has been active in the promotion of public history, a form of historical engagement he discussed in an influential article in 2000.
He often consults on historical projects and speaks at public events held by museums, archives, unions and heritage organizations.
A retirement conference in his honour was held in May 2017, under the title "Scholarship, Activism, Public History: Celebration of the Work and Leadership of Craig Heron".
[5] The same year he also received the Lee Lorch Award from the Canadian Association of University Teachers in recognition of his distinguished career in teaching, research and service.