Juliet Johnson is the recipient of the 2024 President’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching in the category of Full Professor.
President Saini said that the selection committee was particularly impressed by Juliet's outstanding course evaluations, her courage in experimenting and innovating in the classroom, her use of multiple pedagogical strategies, and the regular rebuilding of courses to fit the shifting political realities. Students in particular praise Professor Johnson's engaging courses and her dedication to providing support and mentoring beyond their graduation. Students also noted what a dedicated teacher she is, that her lectures are informative and engaging, and that Professor Johnson’s energy and enthusiasm were infectious. President Saini praised Juliet for having distinguished herself and for honouring her Faculty by outstanding dedication to student learning.
Éric Bélanger has been appointed one of the FRQSC-funded Quebec Research Chairs, together with Mireille Lalancette (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières). Together, they will dedicate their research to the study of Democracy, Living Together and Common Values in Quebec (Chaire de recherche du Québec sur la démocratie, le vivre ensemble et les valeurs communes au Québec). The Chairs are offered on the basis of scientific excellence and based on the recommendations of a peer review committee. Rémi Quirion, the Chief scientist of Quebec, noted that the work by the two chairs will shed important light on the specificities of our society by exploring the themes of Quebec’s contemporary history, as well as democracy, living together and the values shared in Quebec.
T.V. Paul has been awarded the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Distinguished Scholar Award for 2025. The Distinguished Scholar Award is given for life achievement in International Security Studies through major contributions to scholarship in the field both via their own research and writing and their mentorship of others.
T.V. Paul has been appointed a Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada for the 2024-2026 term. APF Canada’s Distinguished Fellows are subject matter experts in various aspects of Canada-Asia relations and provide us with valuable insight and guidance, participating in dialogues and public events, offering commentary, informing research projects, and responding to domestic and international media requests.
Arash Abizadeh and Daniel Béland have been elected as new members of the Royal Society of Canada. For more information in the Faculty of Arts Newsletter.
Arash Abizadeh is R.B. Angus Professor of Political Science and Associate Member of the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. He received his BA(Hon) from the University of Winnipeg, MPhil from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and PhD from Harvard. His research focuses on democratic theory; identity, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism; immigration and border control; social and political power; and 17th and 18th century philosophy, especially Hobbes and Rousseau.
Daniel Béland’s work has illuminated public policy debates in Canada while reshaping the international scholarship on the role of ideas, policy feedback, territorial politics, and federalism. Widely cited internationally, his work has helped move the study of ideas to the forefront of the international field of comparative public and social policy research.
Leonardo Baccini has been awarded the British Journal of Political Science Excellence in Reviewing Award. A new initiative in 2024, this award is bestowed annually to ten distinguished reviewers in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the peer review process at the British Journal of Political Science (BJPolS).
Tari Ajadi's dissertation has been recognized by Dalhousie with a Dalhousie Doctoral Thesis Award, "an annual honour that recognizes dissertations that have made significant and original contributions to the academic community and Canadian society."
T.V. Paul has been recognized by the International Studies Association - Canada with the ISA-Canada Distinguished Scholar Award.
The International Studies Association - Canada Distinguished Scholar Award Committee is thrilled to announce that the 2024 ISA-Canada Distinguished Scholar is Dr. T.V. Paul. Dr. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations at McGill University, a former President of ISA, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has published 22 books, 40 journal articles, and 40 book chapters in top presses in the fields of International Security and Peace Studies. His works have fundamentally shaped scholarship on non-use of nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, regional stabilization, Indo-Pacific IR, national security, Global IR and peaceful change. Besides his extraordinarily high impact and comprehensive scholarship that extends beyond Canada, the Committee noted the exemplary steps Dr. Paul takes to be inclusive in his scholarship and leadership. Not only has he supervised the work of over 43 graduate students, but the nomination letters also lauded Dr. Paul’s patience, generosity, advice and willingness to open doors for junior colleagues in the IR discipline, ISA, Canada and around the world. Under his presidency, the ISA initiated a series of reforms that opened the association to a wide range of scholars. It is a befitting tribute that the 2024 ISA-Canada Distinguished Scholar Award is given to him for his lifetime achievements and inclusive scholarship.
Juliet Johnson is a co-winner of this year's Arts Award for Distinction in Research. This award is given annually by Arts to a faculty member who has made outstanding research contributions to their field. The award alternates by year between emerging and senior scholars.
Debra Thompson, Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies and Associate Professor of Political Science, has won the 2024 H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Faculty of Arts.
Megan Bradley has been awarded the 2023 Best Article Award from the Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration (ENMISA) Section of the International Studies Association for her article “Colonial Continuities and Colonial Unknowing in International Migration Management: The International Organization for Migration Reconsidered,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 49(1): 22-42.
Jacob Levy, Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory, has been named one of eight Adam Smith Tercentenary Templeton Fellows by the University of Glasgow.
Yves Winter's article, "A Government of Creditors: Machiavelli on Genoa, the Bank of San Giorgio, and the Financial Oligarchy" has been awarded the Polity Prize for the best research article published in the 2022 volume of the journal Polity.
Yann Allard-Tremblay, Assistant Professor, has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
Yann Allard-Tremblay, a member of the Huron-Wendat First Nation, is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at McGill University. His transdisciplinary research explores the decolonization and Indigenization of political theory. Centering Indigenous lifeways and political practices in his scholarship, he challenges ongoing colonial dynamics in political thought that silence and distort Indigenous views.
Vincent Pouliot, James McGill Professor, has been selected as the recipient of a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award is valued at €45,000.
The Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award is granted to some 20 scholars and scientists annually award “in recognition of their outstanding accomplishments in research.” In addition, award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in cooperation with specialist colleagues in Germany.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation sponsors distinguished international scientists and scholars irrespectively of their academic discipline or nationality and maintains an international network of academic cooperation and trust.
Éric Bélanger et Co-auteurs: Jean-François Daoust, Valérie-Anne Mahéo, Richard Nadeau have been awarded the Prix Louise-Dandurand du FRQSC for his book Le nouvel électeur québécois.
Au-delà de la percée historique de la Coalition avenir Québec, l’élection québécoise de 2018 a annoncé un changement plus profond dans les facteurs motivant le comportement électoral des Québécois. En particulier, la montée d’un nouveau clivage idéologique qui met l’accent sur des enjeux émergents liés à l’immigration et à l’environnement, et qui a permis à la CAQ, mais aussi à Québec solidaire, de se distinguer face aux deux partis traditionnels que sont le Parti libéral du Québec et le Parti québécois.
Ce livre répond aux questions que pourraient se poser les étudiants de tous les cycles universitaires, les journalistes couvrant la politique québécoise et canadienne, les stratèges des partis politiques ainsi que le grand public intéressé par ces enjeux et leurs implications dans leur vie.
Avec une grande clarté, voire avec pédagogie, cet ouvrage pose les fondements d’une discussion que les auteurs engagent avec l’ensemble de la société québécoise sur un bouleversement de la politique qui se produit dans de nombreux pays.
Maria Popova and Mathieu Lavigne are the winners of the 2023 Principal’s Prize for Public Engagement through Media.
Maria Popova, Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair at the Department of Political Science is the winner of the Prize for Established Academics. In choosing her as the winner, the jury underlined her extensive presence in local, national, and international media as an expert on the former Soviet Union in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as her knowledge sharing on Twitter in the run-up to the war.
Mathieu Lavigne, PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science is the winner of the Prize for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows. In selecting him as the winner, the jury highlighted his use of social and traditional media to share information on the role of misinformation in the Freedom Convoy and both the Ontario and Quebec elections, and his involvement in consultations with Elections Quebec to help develop their strategy to combat misinformation.
Jacob Levy has been named a Distinguished Fellow for the Study of Liberalism and a Free Society at the Institute for Humane Studies.
Jacob Levy is a recipient of the 2022-2023 Institute for Humane Studies Fellowship (IHS) for the Study of Liberalism and a Free Society, which explores the ongoing relevance of liberal principles within the academy and beyond. IHS Distinguished Fellows share an exemplary record of advancing these principles through their research and public engagement.
Jennifer Welsh, Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security, has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada.
Jennifer M. Welsh (Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security, McGill) is an internationally renowned scholar and public intellectual of armed conflict, civilian protection, humanitarian action, and Canadian foreign policy. She co-founded the interdisciplinary Oxford Institute on Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, served as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, and currently co-directs a Canada-wide research network on Women Peace and Security. Welsh’s award-winning work focuses on how international conflict management and humanitarian efforts can leverage and reinforce those of local actors. Throughout her career, she has built bridges with national and international policymakers and nurtured a new generation of policy-engaged scholars on global security.
Debra Thompson, Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies, has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
Debra Thompson, Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies, is an internationally recognized expert on the comparative politics of race. Her research focuses on the relationships among race, the state, public policy, and inequality in Canada and beyond. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (2016) and The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging (2022).
Khalid Medani's book "Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa" (Cambridge) has been selected as a co-recipient of the 2022 award for best book on MENA politics by a senior scholar by the APSA Organized Section on the Middle East and North African Politics.
Leonardo Baccini's article “Gone for Good: Deindustrialization, White Voter Backlash and US Presidential Voting,” co-authored with Stephen Weymouth (APSR) has won the Michael Wallerstein Best Article Award for the best published article in political economy in a peer-reviewed journal from the APSA Political Economy Organized Section.
Leonardo Baccini's paper co-authored with Lucas Leeman, "Do natural disasters help the environment? How voters respond and what that means", has been recognized by the journal Political Science Research and Methods as the best paper published in that journal in 2022.
Daniel Béland, James McGill Professor, is the winner of the 2022 Principal's Prize for Public Engagement for Established Academics! In choosing him as the winner, the jury underlined his extensive presence in local, national and international media, presenting well-informed views about a wide-range of political topics in a thorough and accessible way.
Elisabeth Gidengil has received the 2021 Mildred A. Schwartz Lifetime Achievement Award, from the Canadian Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA-CPS). The award annually recognizes a scholar who has made significant contributions through their career to the study of Canadian politics, either through development of political analysis of Canada or through incorporating Canada as a significant case in comparative political analyses.
Juliet Johnson has been elected Vice President/President Elect (2022-2024) of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. See the announcement on the ASEEES website.
Dietlind Stolle, James McGill Professor, has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada. The RSC's citation reads: Dietlind Stolle, James McGill Professor of Political Science at McGill University and former Director of the Inter-University Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship is internationally acclaimed for her innovative work on how social capital, generalized trust, political participation, and ethnic diversity contribute to a democratic political culture. Her current research generates new insights into support for democratic backsliding in longstanding democracies. Her widely-cited international publications have won several awards. Professor Stolle has also been nationally recognized for her creative approach to teaching.
Maria Popova is the winner of this year’s Best Article Prize from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies for her article, co-authored with Daniel J. Beers, “No Revolution of Dignity for Ukraine's Judges: Judicial Reform after the Euromaidan.” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 28.1 (2020): 113-142.
Jennifer Welsh, Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security, has been elected as an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. As announced on April 22, 2021, Welsh, the Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University, is one of 252 new members of the American Academy, in the field of Leadership, Policy, and Communications. Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honours excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavour to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”
Debra Thompson, Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies, is the winner of the 2021 Principal’s Prize for Public Engagement through Media in the Emerging Researchers category. The Prize for Emerging Researchers is given to recognize a researcher who aspires to better connect the work and research of McGill University with the larger society by engaging with the public and/or media in activities linked to their field of studies, expertise, areas of interest, research and/or teaching.
Yves Winter is among the 2021-2022 selected members of the Institute for Advanced Study - School of Social Science residential fellows in Princeton. Each year, the School invites approximately twenty-five visiting scholars with various perspectives, methods and topics, providing a space for intellectual debate and mutual enrichment. Scholars are drawn from a wide range of fields, notably political theory, economics, law, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and literature. Members pursue their own research, and participate in collective activities, including a weekly seminar at which on-going work is presented.
Debra Thompson, Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies, is the recipient of a new Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies. Tier 2 Chairs, valued at $100,000 annually for five years and renewable only once, are for exceptional emerging researchers, acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field.
Daniel Douek wins the 2020 Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Faculty Lecturer. He has been teaching at McGill since 2015. A specialist in African Politics, Daniel has taught well over 5,000 McGill students to date. Although he teaches many of the largest courses in the department, including introductory courses of more than 600 students, Douek is a favourite among students. His course evaluations are consistently among the highest in the Department and among Poli Sci students a “Douek class” is code for a great class.
Christa Scholtz and former McGill student Maryna Polataiko won the Honorable Mention in the annual Canadian Journal of Law and Society best article competition for their article Transgressing the Division of Powers: The Case of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (2019) 34(3): 393-415.
Dietlind Stolle is the winner of the 2019-2020 Arts Award for Distinction in Research. The Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies) in the Faculty of Arts presents this award annually to a faculty member who has made outstanding research contributions to their field. The award alternates between "emerging" and "senior" scholars.
Yves Winter won the CPSA’s C.B. Macpherson Prize for the best book, Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence, published in English or in French in the field of political theory!
Niccolò Machiavelli is the most prominent and notorious theorist of violence in the history of European political thought - prominent, because he is the first to candidly discuss the role of violence in politics; and notorious, because he treats violence as virtue rather than as vice. In this original interpretation, Yves Winter reconstructs Machiavelli's theory of violence and shows how it challenges moral and metaphysical ideas. Winter attributes two central theses to Machiavelli: first, violence is not a generic technology of government but a strategy that tends to correlate with inequality and class conflict; and second, violence is best understood not in terms of conventional notions of law enforcement, coercion, or the proverbial 'last resort', but as performance. Most political violence is effective not because it physically compels another agent who is thus coerced; rather, it produces political effects by appealing to an audience. As such, this book shows how in Machiavelli's world, violence is designed to be perceived, experienced, remembered, and narrated.
Megan Bradley was recently named a William Dawson Scholar and received the 2020 Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers!
McGill’s William Dawson Scholar Award recognizes scholars poised to become leaders in their fields and are awarded for a five-year term. The Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers was created in 2013 to encourage and celebrate McGill’s most outstanding early-career researchers, as well as to provide them with an advantage as they apply for external awards by adding a prestigious internal distinction to their list of accomplishments. The Office of the Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) awards up to three of these prizes on an annual basis.
Manuel Balán is the 2019 recipient of the Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching at the Assistant Professor level. Each year the University makes one award to a faculty member at each seniority level in recognition of outstanding teaching performance.
Juliet Johnson has been chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), in 2019, elected by her peers for outstanding scholarly, scientific and artistic achievements. Recognition by the RSC is the highest honour an individual can achieve in the Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences.
Juliet Johnson conducts internationally acclaimed research in two fields: international political economy, and memory and commemoration. Using a range of methods, she has explored the transformation of post-communist financial systems, central bank learning and the rise of financial nationalism after the global financial crisis, and political struggles over the fate of Soviet-era monuments and memorials. She has won numerous international prizes and is Lead Editor of the journal Review of International Political Economy.
Kelly Gordon was awarded the 2019 Governor General Gold Medal for outstanding scholastic achievement for her dissertation, Mobilizing Victimhood: Blaming and Claiming the Victim in Conservative Discourse in Canada.
Kelly Gordon was the winner (with co-author Paul Saurette) of the 2019 Lipset Award, from the American Political Science Association, for their book The Changing Voice of the Anti-Abortion Movement: The Rise of "Pro-Woman" Rhetoric in Canada and the United States. The award recognizes a book that had made a significant contemporary contribution to the scholarship of Canadian politics in a comparative perspective.
Arash Abizadeh has won the 2019 Canadian Philosophical Association Book Prize for his book Hobbes and the Two Face of Ethics.
Yves Winter has been awarded the 2019 Best First Book Prize from the Foundations of Political Theory organized section of the American Political Science Association for his book Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence.
Krzysztof Pelc has won the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize for his story Green Velvet. It was selected out of over 3,000 entries!
Catherine Lu has won the International Studies Association’s 2019 International Ethics Section Book Award for her Cambridge volume, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. The award recognizes a book that excels in originality, significance and rigor in the broadly defined field of international ethics.
Leo Baccini and Stephen Weymouth won the 2018 David A. Lake Award for the best paper, entitled “Gone for Good: The Electoral Implications of Plant Closures and Mass Layoffs", presented at the annual meeting of the International Political Economy Society (IPES).
Leo Baccini will be spending the 2019-2020 academic year on a Jean Monnet Fellowship at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
Catherine Lu has been awarded The International Studies Association-Northeast 2018 Yale H. Ferguson Award in recognition of her Press-published book, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics.
The Yale H. Ferguson Award is given annually to the book that most advances the vibrancy of international studies as a pluralist discipline.
Out of the 28 nominations received this year, the prize committee unanimously decided to award Lu, noting: “Justice and Reconciliation is a remarkable scholarly achievement. The book takes seriously the challenge of working through a complex field of contested terms and concepts (‘justice,’ ‘reconciliation,’ etc.), but without subjecting them to depoliticizing, once-and-for-all characterizations, or removing them from their generative historical contexts.”
Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics has previously received the APSA International History and Politics Section Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award as well as the University of Sussex Centre for Advanced International Theory (CAIT) Theory Prize.
T.V. Paul has been inducted into the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) in 2018, elected by his peers for outstanding scholarly, scientific and artistic achievements. Recognition by the RSC is the highest honour an individual can achieve in the Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences.
T.V. Paul focuses on puzzles and paradoxes in International Relations. A major advocate of eclecticism and building bridges across theoretical paradigms, his works have had a significant impact on the development of policy in the areas of peacebuilding, security planning and nuclear arms control. The concepts he pioneered, ’asymmetric conflicts’, ’soft balancing’, ‘complex deterrence’, ‘geostrategic curse’, and ‘status accommodation’ have become part of the lexicon of international relations theory and foreign policy.
Vincent Pouliot has been inducted into the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), Class of 2018. The College provides the RSC with a multigenerational capacity to help Canada and the world address major challenges and seize new opportunities including those identified in emerging fields.
Vincent Pouliot is nationally and internationally known for his leadership in developing a new approach to the study of world politics, often referred to as the practice turn in International Relations. He is widely recognized as one of the main contributors to this innovative research program, which has now spread across subfields ranging from security studies to global governance through environmental politics, international law, and political economy.
Juliet Johnson won the 2018 David Thomson Award for Graduate Supervision and Teaching. This award acknowledges outstanding contributions to promoting graduate student excellence through supervision and teaching by a faculty member who has been supervising for 10 years or more.
Catherine Lu has been awarded the 2018 Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award by the International History and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association for her book, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics is a study in normative and critical theory of how to conceptualize practices of justice and reconciliation that aim to respond to colonial injustices in international and transnational contexts. Examining cases of colonial war, genocide, forced sexual labour, forcible incorporation, and dispossession, this book highlights the structural injustices involved in colonialism, based on race, class, and gender, and shows that interactional practices of justice and reconciliation have been inadequate in redressing these structural injustices. The book argues that contemporary moral/political projects of justice and reconciliation in response to the persistent structural injustices of a colonial international order entail strategies of decolonization, decentering, and disalienation that go beyond interactional practices of accountability and reparation, beyond victims and perpetrators, and beyond a statist world order.
William Clare Roberts was awarded the 2017 Deutscher Memorial Prize for his book Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital.
"William Clare Robert’s book is unique in its combination of a close re-reading of Marx’s Capital through the lens of contextual political theory. He brings to the study of Capital all the verve, passion and erudition of Marx’s own invocation of classical literature to unmask the hellish realities of contemporary capitalism."
Juliet Johnson was awarded the 2017 Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies, the 2017 Ed A Hewett Book Prize, the 2017 Marshall Shulman Book Prize, and the 2017 CPSA Prize in International Relations for her book "Priests of Prosperity: How Central Bankers Transformed the Postcommunist World" (Cornell University Press, 2016). The Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies, established in 2008 and sponsored by the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography in the previous calendar year. The Ed A Hewett Book Prize, established in 1994 and sponsored by the University of Michigan Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe, published in the previous year. The Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize, established in 1987 and sponsored by the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph dealing with the international relations, foreign policy, or foreign-policy decision-making of any of the states of the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe published the previous year. The Canadian Political Science Association Prize in International Relations is awarded biennially to the best book published, in English or in French, in the field of international relations.
Éric Bélanger has been inducted as a new member of The College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, Class of 2017 by the Royal Society of Canada. As a member, Professor Bélanger will represent the emerging generation of scholarly, scientific and artistic leadership in Canada.
Éric Bélanger’s core research focuses on the motivations that explain voting behaviour. He provides new insights into variations in economic voting and challenges conventional wisdom on the question of issue ownership. His work on the circumstances under which minor parties achieve electoral success and disrupt the normal patterns of party competition in advanced democracies highlights the role the rise of public cynicism towards politics plays worldwide.