Members

Nathaniel (Natti) Bar-On has over 25 years of experience working on numerous software development projects, including designing information systems for governmental and military organizations. The most recent professional activities include but not limited to mentoring in Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center, working with MBA students and exploring how to leverage AI technologies to design innovative, ethical and benevolent tech products.

Lucie Edwards’ last assignment in a 34-year career with Global Affairs Canada was as Chief Strategist, working to integrate foreign policy and program delivery. To mark her retirement, she was awarded the Department’s Lifetime Achievement Award of Excellence in 2009.

She had previously served in Ottawa as Assistant Deputy Minister for Corporate Services, Director General of the Global Issues Bureau, Director of Middle East Relations, and Chair of the Southern Africa Task Force. Overseas, she served as Canadian High Commissioner to India, South Africa, and Kenya, where she also served as Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations Environment Program. 

At the beginning of her career, she specialized in human rights and was assigned both to the Occupied Territories and to the townships in Apartheid South Africa. She received a Merit Award for her work in the townships in South Africa and the Public Service Award of Excellence for her humanitarian work during the Genocide in Rwanda in 1994. 

Dmitry Epstein is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the intersection of information, technology, policy, and society. Dmitry’s work has been supported by funders such as the National Science Foundation, Program on Economics & Privacy at George Mason University Law School, and the Internet Society. He published in a number of venues such as The Information Society, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of Information Policy, and Wake Forest Law Review. Dmitry is currently serving as the vice-Chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet).

John Ferris is a Professor of History at The University of Calgary, where he also is a Fellow at The Centre for Military and Strategic Studies. He received an MA (1980) and a PhD (1986) in War Studies, from King’s College, The University of London, United Kingdom. He has published four books and over a hundred of academic articles and book chapters, on diplomatic, intelligence and military history, as well as contemporary strategy and intelligence. His books have been published in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Singapore, Turkey, The United States and the United Kingdom: they also have been translated into French, Hebrew and Japanese. He comments in national and international media, on Canadian and American foreign and military policy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, intelligence, and nuclear weapons. Dr. Ferris is also the author of Behind the Enigma, The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cryber-Intelligence Agency.

Ofer Fridman is a Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London and the Director of Operations at the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC). He holds the degrees of B.A. in Military History and Security Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, M.A. in Counter–Terrorism and Homeland Security from the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya (IDC), and PhD in Politics from the University of Reading. His research interests include: Strategic Communications, Influence and Information operations, Russian military thought, Strategic Studies and Military Transformations. His recent books include: Strategiya: The Foundations of the Russian Art of Strategy (OUP, 2021), Russian Hybrid Warfare: Resurgence and Politicisation, (OUP, 2018) and Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare: New Labels, Old Politics (Lynne Rienner, 2018) co-edited with Vitaly Kabernik and James C Pearce. Before embarking on his academic career, Dr. Fridman served for 15 years in the Israeli Defence Forces.

Holly Ann Garnett is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston. She is cross-appointed faculty at Queen’s University (Canada) and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia (UK)

She is co-director of the  Electoral Integrity Project, an independent academic research project that focusses on the democratic quality of elections around the globe and how they can be improved. She directs the Elections and Democracy Lab – Laboratoire sur les Élections et la Démocratie (LED) at RMC/Queen’s. She is also an affiliated researcher with the Consortium on Electoral Democracy/Consortium de la démocratie électorale (C-Dem) and the SERENE-RISC Smart Cybersecurity Network.

Professor Gregory Hagen earned his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science at Western University, as well as a B.A. and M.A. at the University of British Columbia. He did his LL.B. at Dalhousie University and his LL.M. at the University of Ottawa. He served as Associate Dean (Research) and Graduate Program Director from 2014-2019.  Greg’s areas of research interest include technology law, intellectual property law and information security law. He is a member of the Law Society of British Columbia.

Maureen S. Hiebert is Associate Professor of Political Science and Graduate Program Director at the Centre for Military, Security & Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto and teaches courses in law and politics, international law, the law of armed conflict, and genocide studies. Her publications include the book Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence: Society, Crises, Identity and several articles and book chapters on topics including identity construction and elite decision-making, impediments to genocide prevention, Mass Atrocity Response military operations, the limitations of international criminal trials, and the nature of violence in modernity. Her work has appeared in Genocide Studies International, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Politics and Governance, and European Legacy and several edited volumes. Her current research explores the challenges posed to the law of armed conflict and democratic civil-military relations by military AI and lethal autonomous weapon systems, the role of law in the perpetration of genocide, and the nexus between modernity and political violence. Hiebert is also a former co-editor of the journal Genocide Studies International and is currently a member of the academic board of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, the Zoryan Institute, and the International Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem.

Justin Massie is Full Professor of political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal and Co-Director of the Network for Strategic Analysis. He was the 2019 Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Canada-U.S. Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. His research focuses on the global power transition, multinational military coalitions, and Canadian foreign and defence policy. His work has been published in several journals, including Foreign Policy Analysis, Contemporary Security Policy, Comparative Strategy, Canadian Journal of Political Science, International Journal (winner of the best article published in 2017), Journal of Transatlantic Studies, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (winner of the best article published in 2008) and Études internationales (winner of the best article published in 2011). He is the author of Francosphère : l’importance de la France dans la culture stratégique du Canada (PUQ, 2013), and co-editor of Paradiplomatie identitaire : Nations minoritaires et politique extérieure (PUQ, 2019) and America’s Allies and the Decline of U.S. Hegemony (Routledge, 2019).

Bill McAuley, PhD, is a public security official with a sub-national government.

Nik Nanos leads Nanos Research, one of Canada’s most distinguished research companies.  The Nanos Research Group of Companies includes Nanos Rutherford McKay & Co, an affiliate of Nanos Research and Rutherford McKay Associates with service offerings including public acceptance and engagement, communications audits, and narrative development. It also includes Nanos-dimap Analytika, analytics and targeting research practice, which is a joint venture with dimap, one of Germany’s top research organizations.

He is the Chief Data Scientist and Founder of Nanos Research, a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, Chair of Atlantik Brücke Canada which is a non-profit focused on advancing Canada-Germany relations and one of 20 Honorary Captains in the Royal Canadian Navy. He is also the Past Chair of Carleton University in Ottawa which has 30 thousand students and a budget of over $500M.

Nik leads the team behind the weekly Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index, considered a must-have resource for senior executives and is also featured in a weekly segment on CTV’s News Channel, Nanos on the Numbers, which focuses on the latest political, business, and social trends.

He is the pollster for CTV News, Canada’s largest private broadcaster, the Globe & Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, Bloomberg News in Canada.

Jonathan Paquin is a professor of Political Science at Université Laval. He has written numerous articles on foreign policy and international relations in Cooperation and Conflict, Foreign Policy Analysis, Mediterranean Politics, the Canadian Journal of Political Science and International Journal, among others. He is also the co-editor of America’s Allies and the Decline of US Hegemony, Routledge, 2020; the coauthor of Foreign Policy Analysis: A Toolbox, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018; the co-editor of Game Changer: The Impact of 9/11 on North American Security, UBC Press, 2014; and the author of A Stability-Seeking Power: US Foreign Policy and Secessionist Conflicts, McGill-Queen’s, 2010. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science from McGill University and was a Fulbright visiting scholar and Resident Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS, Johns Hopkins) in Washington DC.

Joel Reardon is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Parex Innovations Fellow at the University of Calgary and has received the Casper Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. He is also a co-founder of AppCensus Inc., which provides privacy analytics as a service in the mobile world. He studies systems security at all software layers, and has particular interest in mobile security and privacy, tools for privacy compliance, and secure storage.

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, edited two others, and published 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, a part of the CGAI podcast network, with Stéfanie von Hlatky.

David Siman-Tov is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). He served in the military intelligence in the IDF for twenty-five years, and has published widely about cognitive warfare, intelligence, and the cyber realm. He is the co-editor of the journal Intelligence in Theory and in Practice, and co-author of a book on the first decade of the Intelligence Corps in the ID .

Alicia Wanless is the director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Alicia investigates how people shape—and are shaped—by a changing information space.  With over a decade of experience in researching and analyzing the information environment, focusing on propaganda and information warfare, Wanless applies this learning to support government, military, and major tech companies to develop policies and integrate information activities into training programs that better reflect how the information environment is manipulated. Wanless is currently a PhD Researcher at King’s College London exploring alternative frameworks for understanding the information environment.

Leah West is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

Dr. West practices, studies and publishes in the field of national security law. She completed her SJD at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 2020; her research explored the application of criminal, constitutional and international law to state conduct in cyberspace. Leah regularly lectures and engages with the media on her areas of research interest. She is also the National Administrator of the Canadian National Rounds of the Phillip C Jessup International Law Moot, and serves as Counsel with Friedman Mansour LLP.

Leah previously served as Counsel with the Department of Justice in the National Security Litigation and Advisory Group where she appeared before the Federal Court in designated proceedings and the Security Intelligence Review Committee.  Before being called to the Ontario Bar in 2016, Leah clerked for the Honourable Justice Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada. Prior to attending law school, Leah served in the Canadian Armed Forces for ten years as an Armoured Officer; she deployed to Afghanistan in 2010.

Elizabeth Whitsitt teaches various courses in international law and dispute resolution at the University of Calgary, Faculty of Law. Professor Whitsitt received her LLM in International Legal Studies from New York University and completed her PhD in 2017. Her PhD research focused on the intersection of trade law and investment arbitration. More specifically, her work considered the role that adjudicators play in the continuing conversation about the relationship between the international trade and international investment law regimes and the extent to which the international trade and international investment law regimes are uniting through the process of adjudication. Professor Whitsitt has published and presented extensively in the areas of international trade and investment law. Professor Whitsitt is currently a scholar-in-residence at Wilmer Hale LLP. She is also the recipient of a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Killam Memorial Scholarship and the Marc Lalonde Prize for Excellence in International and Commercial Arbitration.

Alex Wilner, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NSPIA), Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is a leading scholar of contemporary deterrence theory and practice. His research – which explores the nexus between deterrence theory and emerging security considerations, domains, and environments – has shaped the fourth, and now fifth, generation of deterrence scholarship. Among his over two dozen journal publications, his articles on the subject of deterring terrorism and cyber deterrence have been published in International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Security Studies, and Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. His books include Deterrence by Denial: Theory and Practice (eds., Cambria Press, 2021), Deterring Rational Fanatics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), and Deterring Terrorism: Theory and Practice (eds., Stanford University Press, 2012).

Since joining NPSIA in 2015, his broader scholarship has been awarded over $1M (CAD) in external research funding: he was awarded a Government of Canada SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2016-2017), a prestigious SSHRC Insight Grant (2020-2025), and a Government of Ontario Early Researcher Award (2021-2026) to study state and non-state cyber deterrence; two major IDEaS grants (2018-2021) and several MINDS grant (2019, 2020) from the Department of National Defence to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deterrence; several smaller research grants from the Canadian Network on Terrorism, Security, and Society (TSAS); and a major Mitacs grant (2020-2022) to explore emerging technology and Canadian defence policy and strategy.

Hilary Young (LL.B., LL.M., Ph.D) is a Professor in the Law Faculty at the University of New Brunswick. Her primary research area is defamation law, and she frequently writes about defamation law in the context of internet communications. For example, she and Emily Laidlaw wrote a paper setting out a model for internet intermediary liability in defamation. She and Professor Laidlaw have also written about the non-consensual distribution of intimate images and other legal issues raised by communications technology. Other research interests include health law, remedies, privacy, and tort law. She is one of the authors of the 11th edition of Canadian Tort Law.