biography

I am Executive Director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. From 2019 until January 2020, I held a University Research Chair in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Canada; and from 2008 to 2018, I was the CIGI Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo. Between 2009 and 2014, I was founding Director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation and prior to that the founding Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, where I held the George Ignatieff Chair in Peace and Conflict Studies.

I was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and received my B.A. in political science from Carleton University in 1980 and my Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in international relations, defense and arms control policy, and conflict theory in 1989. I then moved to the University of Toronto to lead several research projects investigating the links between environmental stress and violence in poor countries. I joined the faculty of the Department of Political Science in 1993.

My research focuses on threats to global security in the 21st century, including economic instability, climate change, energy scarcity, ideological polarization, and mass violence. I also study how people, organizations, and societies can better resolve their conflicts and innovate in response to complex problems. My work is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on political science, economics, environmental studies, geography, cognitive science, social psychology, and complex systems theory.