Michael W. Manulak is Associate Professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. He is author of Change in Global Environmental Politics: Temporal Focal Points and the Reform of International Institutions (Cambridge University Press 2022). His academic work has appeared in Review of International Organizations, Foreign Affairs, and Global Environmental Politics. He is co-author of the Advisory Panel report Canada and the United Nations: Rethinking and Rebuilding Canada’s Global Role. From 2015-2019, he served in the Government of Canada, mainly within the Department of National Defence, representing the government internationally on proliferation security issues. His doctorate is from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College).

Kerry Buck joined Canada’s then Department of External Affairs and International Trade in 1991. She most recently was Assistant Secretary to the Treasury Board responsible for economic sector.

Prior to that she served as Canada’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council (NATO). Previous senior diplomatic positions include Political Director and Assistant Deputy Minister for International Security and Political Affairs, Assistant Deputy Minister for Africa, for Latin America and the Caribbean, head of the Afghanistan Task Force, Director General for the Middle East and Maghreb and Director for Human Rights. She was also posted to the Canadian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. Outside of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, Ms. Buck served in the Privy Council Office, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the International Development Research Centre and the Constitutional Law Bureau of the Office of the Attorney General of Ontario.

Born in Kitchener, Ontario, Senator Peter M. Boehm holds a Ph.D in History from the University of Edinburgh, a Master of Arts in International Affairs from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English and History from Wilfrid Laurier University.

He was Deputy Minister for the G7 Summit and Personal Representative of the Prime Minister (Sherpa) from July 2017, until his retirement from the public service in September 2018. Peter Boehm had previously been Deputy Minister of International Development, Associate, and, subsequently, Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. From 2013 to 2017, he concurrently served as Sherpa for the G8 and subsequent G7 Summits, as well as the Nuclear Security Summit.

A former career foreign service officer, he served as Ambassador to Germany from 2008 to 2012 and previously as Assistant Deputy Minister for the Americas, North America and Consular Affairs. Abroad, he was Minister (political and public affairs) at the Embassy of Canada to the United States in Washington and Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States. He has held a variety of diplomatic positions including assignments in Cuba and Costa Rica. He was National Summit Coordinator for the Santiago and Québec Summits of the Americas, Special Envoy for the Organization of American States Democratization Mission in Peru and Personal Representative (Sherpa) of the Prime Minister for the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata in 2005. From 2005 to 2008, he was the senior official responsible for the annual North American Leaders’ Summit.

He is a recipient of the Public Service of Canada Outstanding Achievement Award and the Canadian Foreign Service Officer Award for his contribution to advancing peace in Central America. He was appointed to the Senate of Canada, representing the province of Ontario in October 2018. He is currently the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

As Executive Director of Future Borders Coalition, Laura Dawson works with a binational coalition of government and industry leaders in order to build better borders for travel and trade. Prior to her appointment to FBC, Dr. Dawson led the North America office of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Institute, facilitating public sector digital transformation. Other posts include director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., founder of Dawson Strategic, and senior economic advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Canada. Dawson serves on the teaching faculty at the Master of Public Policy program at McGill University in Montreal and is a board member of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. In addition, Dawson was jury co-chair for the Government of Canada’s 2022 New Frontiers in Research Fund and was named 2021 Person of Distinction by the Public Affairs Association of Canada. Dr. Dawson holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Carleton University. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Stephen Saideman holds the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and is the Director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network. He has written four books: The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict; For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (with R. William Ayres); NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (with David Auerswald); and Adapting in the Dust: Lessons Learned from Canada’s War in Afghanistan, as well as articles and chapters on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, alliance dynamics, and civil-military relations. Prof. Saideman has received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Social Sciences Research Council. The former placed on the Bosnia desk of the Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate of US Joint Staff for a year, and the latter facilitated research in Japan. He taught previously at the University of Vermont, Texas Tech University, and at McGill University. He writes online including at his own site (saideman.blogspot.com). He has won awards for teaching, for mentoring other faculty, for public engagement, and for his blogging on international studies. He is currently working on the role of legislatures in civil-military relations in many democracies around the world. He tweets at @smsaideman, and co-hosts the Battle Rhythm podcast.

Jean-Christophe Boucher is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and at the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary. His current work focuses on applied machine learning to understand how the digital world shapes our society. He is currently holding grants from the Department of National Defence (DND) to study information operations; the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to understand civil-military relations in Canada; and holds grants from Alberta Innovates, the Vaccine Confidence Fund and Merck to study vaccine hesitancy on social media to develop better communications strategies and tools to increase vaccine uptake. He holds a BA in History from the University of Ottawa, a MA in Philosophy from the Université de Montréal and a PhD in Political Science from Université Laval. He specializes in international relations, with an emphasis on foreign policy, international security, and data analytics.

Charlotte Duval-Lantoine is the Ottawa Operations Manager and a Fellow at the Réseau d’analyse stratégique. She completed a Master in Military History at Queen’s University, during which she started researching on the toxic culture of leadership in the Canadian Armed Forces during the 1990s and its impact on gender integration, which had started in 1989. She continues to study leadership and culture change issues in the military in her free time. She obtained her BA in History and Political Science at McGill University in 2017. During her graduate studies, Charlotte served as the Assistant to the Executive Director of Women In International Security-Canada for the fiscal year 2018-2019. She has also worked as a research assistant and translator on projects about gender mainstreaming and integration in NATO Armed Forces, and on the gendered dimension of veteran transition at Queen’s University Center for International and Defence Policy (CIDP).

A strategic analyst with DRDC-CORA, Andrea's personal research focusses on the intersection of national defence, politics, and society, examining the military as an institution, civil-military relations, personnel policy, and procurement. Her dissertation project investigates the role of gender in Canadian civil-military relations. Prior to joining DRDC in 2021, Andrea taught at Canadian Forces College, Toronto, and at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Andrea’s work has been published in International Journal, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, and the Canadian Naval Review, as chapters in several books, and in popular venues such as Policy Options. She is the co-editor, with Brian Bow, of Canadian Foreign Policy: Reflections on a Field in Transition, published by UBC Press (2020).

Alexandra Richards is currently completing a PhD in Political Science at Simon Fraser University. Her primary research interests are generational theory, public opinion on security and defence issues, international relations, and strategic culture. Her research examines how different generations (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z) view security and defence issues and asks whether generational shifts may alter how we approach security and defence issues in the future. Her research also examines the ways in which culture (generational or strategic) can constrain and shape decisionmakers’ perceptions and decisions on security and defence issues.

Through her work as Assistant Field School Director for the NATO Field School program from 2018-2021, she has also developed an interest in pedagogy, more specifically, how simulations, experiential learning, and field study can impact and enrich student learning.

Esra Bengizi is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Toronto. Esra is the co-director and founder of the WCAPS (Women of Colour Advancing Peace & Security) Canada Chapter. Esra specializes in post-colonial and feminist studies in the North African region. Her scholarship examines the intersection of politics, culture, and gender in Algeria as well as the modern Maghrib to explore the role of women in political movements. Her work and research is rooted in people power, systemic oppression, post-colonialism and a feminist, de-colonial approach to human rights. Esra is a researcher, lecturer and social justice activist. She works alongside several community members, institutions, governments and organizations to work on solutions related to peace and security, gender inequality, gender-based violence, systemic racism and terrorism

Azeezah Kanji is a legal academic and writer. She received her Juris Doctor from University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and Masters of Law specializing in Islamic Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Azeezah’s work focuses on issues relating to racism, law, and social justice. Her writing has appeared in the Al Jazeera English, Haaretz, Toronto Star, TruthOut, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, OpenDemocracy, Roar Magazine, iPolitics, Policy Options, Rabble, and various academic anthologies and journals. Azeezah also serves as Director of Programming at Noor Cultural Centre

Aaron T. Francis is a doctoral student at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo, researching the political economic intersections of China-US-Taiwan relations in Latin America and The Caribbean. Aaron is also an archivist, curator and the founder a Vintage Black Canada, a multidisciplinary creative initiative documenting the transnational modern history of the African Diaspora in Canada.

Dr. Abu-Zahra is an Associate Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa, and a member of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre.

She co-facilitates, with Professor Emily Regan Wills, “Community Mobilization in Crisis”, a project that co-creates open educational resources with community mobilizers around the world in multiple languages, and supports the use of the resources transnationally to build community mobilizations.

Dr. Abu-Zahra has written on a variety of topics, including gender justice in colonial and conflict situations, and the implications of geographic (im)mobility for education and health. She has a longstanding interest in pedagogy, works closely with university services and research groups in teaching and active, experiential, and community-engaged learning, and was a finalist for the Ottawa Network for Education’s Capital Educators’ Award. Her research focuses on the everyday consequences and spaces for agency in situations of crisis and, most recently, on the role of higher education institutions in transforming power relations and opening spaces for healthy and accountable relations

Dr. Abu-Zahra invites members of the student and faculty community, as well as feminist organizations from the local to the transnational levels, to join in communities of practice with the theme, “Sharing Feminist Pedagogy and Mobilising Solidarity in Our Learning Environment”.

These communities of practice will be opportunities to share experiences and interests in learning and in transforming the structures and contexts of learning, with inspiration from the diverse but often under-celebrated initiatives that abound in these communities. Dr. Abu-Zahra will also facilitate credit-bearing seminars in “Feminist Pedagogy, Community Mobilization, and Learning”.

Jillian Sunderland is a Sociology Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto and a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral scholar. Her academic focus is on masculinities, power, and violence, but she frames these issues in relation to anti-black racism and settler colonialism in Canada. Throughout her work she typically employs document and narrative analysis to archival, media, web forums, governmental documents, and policy reports. She recently published her first academic article in the journal of Men and Masculinities; where she provides a summary and a brief commentary on this project in an interview for U of T News. She also recently published a first-person article for CBC National News. Jillian Sunderland is committed to engaging in public sociology, and my sociological insights can be found in The Medium, The Varsity, CBC Radio, and CBC Kids News.