He received his PH.D. (History) from the University of Toronto and was a Post Doctoral Fellow with the Ontario Ministry of Economic Innovation at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Dr. Lawrie researches and teaches in the fields of modern American History, African American, Disability and Urban History. His work has appeared in the Canadian Review of American Studies; Disability Histories, Truth in the Public Sphere; and the Oxford Handbook of Disability History. His recent book Forging a Laboring Race: The African American Worker in the Progressive Imagination, (NYU Press 2016) examines the nexus between industrial management and race science in early 20th century America.