Research
Scholars associated with the Trudeau Centre engage in research to better understand peace and conflict, and students are given opportunities to benefit from this work. Current scholarly research focuses on the links between resource scarcities and violence, the sources and nature of ethno-nationalist conflict, social adaptation to complex stresses, sources of justice in international affairs, failures of foreign policy decision making, and alternative measures of societal performance.
Quick Jump: Find out more regarding the Environmental Database , Graduate Research, Undergraduate Research, or the Kiessling Paper?
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Environmental Database
Trudeau Centre scholars have conducted pioneering research on the relationship between environmental stress and violent conflict. Previously completed studies include a 3-year project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict, a 4-year project in Environmental Scarcities, State Capacity, and Civil Violence, and a 2-year project on Environment, Population and Security.
Materials accumulated over the course of the above projects have been compiled into an extensive Environmental Security Database containing approximately 20,000 items.
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Graduate Research
The Trudeau Centre offers research opportunities for Ph.D. students in Political Science through the Beattie Fellowship Program.
The Trudeau Centre's 2010 Graduate Beattie Fellowship Award winners:
Ali Bangi, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science
Ali Karimzadeh Bangi is currently a first year PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science, at the University of Toronto. Ali’s educational background is both in computer and political science. He has completed his undergraduate studies in computer engineering at the University of Tehran and he recently completed his MA at the University of Toronto in Political Science and International Relations. His current research focuses on the militarization of cyberspace.
Jennifer Catallo, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science
Jennifer is completing her dissertation entitled “Who is a Mercenary? Anti-mercenarism a Declining Taboo,” in it she asks, how a number of domestic and international actors made the transition from considering the employment of mercenaries—in essence, the use of private force—as illegitimate to acceptable? Jennifer maintains that the once-powerful taboo against mercenaries has eroded; there are no more mercenaries. Instead today there is a private security industry (PSI) composed of private security professionals. Actors previously labelled ‘mercenaries’ are now instead identified through a wide range of more acceptable terms—private security experts, private security professionals, and private contractors. As the PSI expands into security experts, logistical experts, contingency contractors, private security professionals, security contractors, and in some cases humanitarians, the scope of what and who counts as a mercenary correspondingly contracts, thus weakening the anti-mercenary taboo. The overall result of a legitimate PSI option has come to create a new norm associated with private security and private force. Before beginning her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, Jennifer received her BA and MA from York University. She worked as an instructor at Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning and has been the head teaching assistant and guest lecturer for an International Relations course held at UTM for the last five years. Her research has been funded by the 2010 Professor Emeritus Frank Peers Graduate Research Scholarship, the 2009 Ontario Government Textbook and Technology Grant, and the 2009 University of Toronto SGS Research Travel Grant. Jennifer will be presenting her research at the 2011 International Studies Association and has previously presented her research at the American Political Science Association (2009). Jennifer has worked as a conference discussant at a Genocide Workshop hosted by Concordia University (2008) and participated in a summer workshop on teaching about terrorism in Oklahoma (2007) She has also organized academic conferences including “Academics and Industry: Connecting the Disconnections on the Role of the Private Security Industry in Conflict and Post-Conflict Environments” held in Washington DC (2010).
Anna Shamaeva, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science
Anna Shamaeva is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is also enrolled in the Dynamics of Global Change (DGC) collaborative Ph.D. program, housed at the Munk School of Global Affairs. She specializes in International Relations and Comparative Politics with most of her work at the intersection of these two fields. Her research interests include international relations theory, international political economy, and political science methodology. Her dissertation focuses on politics of international disaster relief. Originally from Russia, Anna graduated summa cum laude with B.Sc. in Political Science and Business Administration from Northern Michigan University in 2004. In 2006, she completed a collaborative M.A. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Toronto. In addition to her academic pursuits, for the past five years she has been a Junior Fellow of Massey College, Canada. The main focus of Anna's research is the conditions that enable states to achieve cooperative outcomes when in crisis. It is widely accepted that reciprocity is a key underlying mechanism for cooperation in international relations but there is little systematic evidence supporting this claim in the context natural and technological disasters.
William Beattie Graduate Award Winners 2009:
Andrea Paras, PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science
Andrea's dissertation, entitled “A Genealogy of Humanitarianism: Moral Obligation and Sovereignty in International Relations,” uses a genealogical method to understand the relationship between sovereignty and moral obligation during the Westphalian period. The dissertation’s central argument is that moral obligation and sovereignty are mutually constitutive, contra arguments that view them in opposition to each other. The rise of sovereignty, and its shifting construction over time, has contributed not only to the formation of the state as a particular form of political community, but has also legitimized the construction of certain moral boundaries. In addition to sketching the broad outlines of how this relationship has developed up to the present, the dissertation also includes three in depth case studies:
the case of Huguenot refugees in England during the 16 century, the 19th century British abolitionist movement, and the emergence of the principle of the Responsibility to Protect. Andrea is currently a Beattie Fellow in Peace and Conflict Studies, and a Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Ethics. She completed a BA in History at the University of British Columbia, and received her MA in History from the Collaborative Masters in International Relations program at the University of Toronto. Her research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS). She has presented papers at the International Studies Association, the Standing Group on International Relations of the European Consortium for Political Research, and is a participant in an ongoing series of workshops on the relationship between humanitarianism and religion.
Rebecca Sanders, PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science
Rebecca is currently a fifth year PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science. Before coming to U of T, she received her BA and MA from McGill University. Her research interests include international security, irregular conflict, international and national security law, human rights, American foreign policy, intelligence agencies, North-South relations, and the ethics of political violence. She is in the midst of writing her dissertation, Exceptional Security Practices, Human Rights Abuses, and the Politics of Legal Legitimacy in Post-9/11 America, which examines the relationship between legal and normative constraints and the adoption of controversial security practices like torture, indefinite detention, and warrantless surveillance in the "war on terror". She hopes to finish by this time next year.
This summer Rebecca will be teaching a course on the politics of insurgency and counterinsurgency.
The following are the Trudeau Centre's past Beattie Ph.D. Fellows:
- Amar Athwal
- Tom Deligiannis
- Marie Eve Desrosiers
- Asya El-Meehy
- Elisabeth King
- Elinor Bray Collins
- Rinku Lamba
- Allona Sund
Doctoral students under the supervision of Trudeau Centre Faculty Members:
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Robert Astroff
- Tom Deligiannis
- Marie Eve Desrosiers
- Bill Flanik
- Timothy Gravelle
- Elisabeth King
- Steven Purdy
- Mark Raymond
- Daniel Schwartz
- Allona Sund
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t the Trudeau Centre we emphasize the value of hands-on field research by undergraduate students. Beattie Undergraduate Scholarships are currently available to support such research.
Beattie Scholarship Award recipients, 2006-2007
- Craig Damian Smith, Beattie Undergraduate Scholar
- Sara Tilley, Beattie Undergraduate Scholar
- Iris Tal-Halbert, Beattie Undergraduate Scholar
- Max Kelly , Beattie Undergraduate Scholar
- Hugh Smiley , Beattie Undergraduate Scholar
- Emily Akalu
- Alesia Kachur
- Michael Skinner
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The Kiessling Papers are published regularly by the Trudeau Centre with the sponsorship of Greg Kiessling and Pam Isaak.
The series gives the Centre's faculty, senior researchers, fellows and students, as well as members of the broader scholarly community, the opportunity to disseminate their work to scholars, specialists and policymakers worldwide. Manuscripts, comments and mailing list inquiries should be sent to the Centre Director at:
The Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University College,
15 King's College Circle, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3H9.
Statements of fact or opinion appearing in The Kiessling Papers are solely those of the authors and do not imply endorsement by the editors, publishers or sponsors.
New! 2011 Kiessling Paper written by Yinuo Geng, Hon. BA, University of Toronto, MA candidate, SAIS, John Hopkins University
Perspectives and Biases of Chinese and Japanese Youth on China-Japan Relations: The Influence of Social Identity
Abstract (PDF, 9KB)
Full Text (PDF, 234KB)
Previous Puplished Papers:
Published Papers:
Karen Frecker,
Beyond GDP: Enabling democracy with better measures of social well-being,
(June 2005)
In this inaugural paper of the Trudeau Centre's Kiessling Papers, Karen Frecker, a graduate of the Trudeau Centre and a specialist in energy policy, tackles the problem of developing meaningful, comprehensive and rigorous measures of social well-being. Frecker examines the endeavor's theoretical, ethical and methodological challenges. She also discusses how measures of social well-being can be made accessible and appealing to a wide audience. Finally, in a pioneering meta-analysis of current work in the area, Frecker reviews and assesses in detail a large number of existing approaches to measuring social performance.
- Introduction (PDF: 105 Kb)
- Executive Summary (PDF: 280 Kb)
- Full Text (PDF: 2.8 Mb)
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