John Loxley was a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba. Loxley was a prominent economist, published extensively in the areas of community economic development, international development, and international monetary finance. He was concerned primarily with alternative economic theory and policy. His publications consist of fifteen books, and over one hundred and fifty papers and reports. He also served, in various capacities, on the following editorial boards: Journal of Development Policy and Practice, Journal of Developing Areas, Review of African Political Economy, Studies in Political Economy, Internet Journal of African Studies, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Canadian Dimension magazine, and Uchumi.

John Loxley was born in Sheffield, England in 1942 into a large working class family. He completed a Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) in Economics (1963) and a Ph.D. in Economics (1966) at the University of Leeds in England. His Ph.D. dissertation is entitled “The Development of the East African Monetary and Financial System, 1950-1964.” In the mid-1960s, he began his academic career as a lecturer in the Economics Department at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, during which time he also served as a research manager and an economist for the National Bank of Commerce Tanzania while performing duties as director of the Department of Economics and Planning at the Institute of Finance in Tanzania.

Loxley immigrated to Canada in 1975 to take the appointment of Secretary (Deputy Minister) of the Resource and Economic Development Sub-Committee for the Province of Manitoba. In July of 1977, he began teaching in the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba where he later served as head of the department (1984 to 1997) as well as the coordinator of Research, Global Political Economy Program for the Faculty of Arts (2002-present). In June 2014, he was appointed a part-time executive coordinator position on the Premier’s Advisory Council for Education, Poverty and Citizenship, while continuing to teach and advise Ph.D. students at the University of Manitoba, and fulfill his position as a lead researcher for the Manitoba Research Alliance (MRA) Partnership for Change project.

Over the span of his career, Loxley has served as economic advisor to governments in Uganda, Tanzania, Madagascar, Mozambique, Manitoba, and during the incoming presidency of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. He also acted as an advisor for a number of international policy institutions, such as the African Capacity Building Foundation. In 2005, Loxley became a Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada. He received numerous awards and recognitions for his teaching, academic performance, and services to the broader community, such as the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Distinguished Service Award in 2008 and the Galbraith Prize in Economics and Social Justice by the Progressive Forum in 2010. In 2002, a symposium was held in his honour at the University of Manitoba, “Governance and Adjustment in an Era of Globalization: An International Symposium in Honour of John Loxley.” In 2005, a book of essays was published, “Globalization, Neo-Conservative Policies and Democratic Alternatives: Essays in Honour of John Loxley.” His biography is listed in Who’s Who in Canada.

Loxley held a life-long membership with the Manitoba Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives (CCPA-MB), a progressive policy organization that he collaborated with on numerous studies. He was the coordinator of the first Alternative Federal Budget in Canada and the first Alternative Provincial Budget in Manitoba. Loxley was a key founder and principal investigator of a $2.5 million SSHRC partnership grant with CCPA-MB that collaborates with academic researchers, inner-city and Aboriginal organizations, and government partners in Manitoba to examine community economic development, poverty and social exclusion in inner-city and Aboriginal communities. In addition, he was an expert witness for the First Nations Child and Family Society of Canada in a case before the Canadian Human Rights Commission on the underfunding of services to First Nations communities. He served as chair or an executive member on numerous board of directors in Manitoba, such as: Pollock’s Hardware Co-op Ltd (a community owned Winnipeg store), Ogijiita Pimatiswin Kinamatwin (“OPK” is an Aboriginal Youth Housing Renovation Project for ex-inmates), SEED Winnipeg (a community-based micro-lending institution), CHO!CES - A Coalition for Social Justice, the Society for Manitobans with Disabilities, Oxfam, the Manitoba Anti-Apartheid Coalition, and Manitoba Hydro.

According to an interview conducted by ARP Books with Loxley, his political awakening happened in a series of stages, beginning with his experiences and upbringing in industrial England where he learned to associate with the causes of labour, reject Conservative policy, and understand the purposes of the colonial liberation struggle. Later, he was introduced to progressive economics at the University of Leeds, a radical department in the 1960s. However, he explained that it was during his work in Africa (Tanzania and Mozambique) where he truly “discovered what radical politics and social and economic transformation were about.” In Africa, he was a part of the attempts to build socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was also at this time that a series of banking reforms he proposed were implemented. Since then, Loxley has influenced policy and development in Canada and abroad, and as of 2014, he continued to actively work in-community with various stakeholders in the community, academe, and government to produce progressive policy change.

Loxley passed away on July 28, 2020.