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From the Queen's Gazette of Tuesday, October 18, 2018:

Queen’s University is remembering the accomplishments and contributions of C.E.S. (Ned) Franks, a professor emeritus in the Department of Political Studies and the School of Physical and Health Education.

Dr. Franks taught at Queen’s for 35 years and was a leading expert on Canada’s parliamentary system. He died Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018. He was 81.

“Queen’s and Canada have lost a great political scientist in Ned Franks. He had a long career which included mentoring many students who have gone on to distinguished careers in academia, the public service, journalism, and politics,” says Principal and Vice-Chancellor Daniel Woolf.”  An expert on Canada’s parliamentary system he served as a regular adviser to government and media. He also participated in Queen’s governance, most recently on the former Campus Planning and Development Committee.”

Born in Toronto, Dr. Franks attended Upper Canada College, earned his BA (1959) and MA (1965) from Queen’s, and his DPhil from Oxford.

He returned to Queen’s as an assistant professor in 1967 after working for several years with the Government of Saskatchewan, including a stint as clerk assistant of the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly.

Throughout his career at Queen’s, Dr. Franks’ influence and reputation was felt well beyond the university and his advice and insight were regularly sought out by fellow scholars, governments, and media.

“He was a kind of larger-than-life figure both here in the department but also in the scholarly community and beyond. His intellectual breadth was incredibly broad and deep. He had a passion for knowledge,” says Jonathan Rose, an associate professor in Political Studies. “I don’t know any other political scientist who has written respected books on canoeing and Parliament. His sense of wonderment about things beyond and outside of the narrow discipline of political studies was incredibly refreshing and demonstrated a love of learning about the world.”

Dr. Franks was Dr. Rose’s supervisor during his master’s studies at Queen’s and later became his colleague when he joined the Department of Political Studies. He was strongly influenced by Dr. Franks’ sense of rigour and the importance of precision in scholarship.

“Here was an academic who continued the best tradition of Queen’s, which is to make connections between policy making and scholarship,” Dr. Rose says. “I think one of the reasons Queen’s politics is respected in Ottawa is because of this close connection and regular advice that scholars like Ned would provide governments of all political stripes.”

In addition to more than 100 articles and chapters in books, Dr. Franks wrote or edited 14 books and monographs, including The Parliament of Canada, The Canoe and White Water, and Dissent and the State. His work included explorations into public administration, government accountability, parliamentary government in Canada, aboriginal self-government, canoeing, sport and politics, Canada's North, issues related to nuclear energy, and politics in India.

He also wrote numerous influential op-ed pieces for newspapers and magazines and was asked by national and international media for his insight on important issues on the Canadian political agenda. 

In 2002, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal and, in 2004, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society awarded him its 75th Anniversary Medallion.

In 2007 the Queen’s University bestowed its Distinguished Service Award upon Dr. Franks in recognition of his four decades of leadership and work on campus planning, including playing a key role in the planning and construction of Mackintosh-Corry Hall as well as a major renovation and expansion program for the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.

“With gentle humor, positive reinforcement and comprehensive knowledge you have presided and offered wise counsel as the university sought to improve planning activities for the practice of com����ֱ��ing buildings, and procedures for selecting leading architects and adopting competitive processes,” a section of the award citation reads. “The results may be found in the record of award-winning structures renewing one of Canada’s historic institutions.”

Dr. Franks also played the roles of an adviser on student life matters and a supporter of student self-government, serving as a mentor to generations of student leaders in the Alma Mater Society, and twice was appointed as honorary president.

Brief Biography

From 1969 to 2003, George Perlin was a member of the Department teaching courses on Canadian and Comparative politics. From 2003 to 2013 he taught courses on international democratic development and Canadian democracy in the School of Policy Studies.  

He founded and was Director of the then Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's (now known as the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity) from 1993 to 2002.

From 2003 to 2006 Perlin was a Fellow at the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) where he edited and contributed to a series of papers on Canada's policy for assistance to democratic development.  He has been a consultant on democracy assistance policy to agencies of the Canadian government and to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Perlin has also had experience as a practitioner in the delivery of democracy assistance as director of two CIDA-funded projects to establish a program of education in the study of democracy for the universities, technical colleges, and secondary schools of Ukraine.  In collaboration with Kyiv National Pedagogical University, the projects established courses on democracy in 250 universities and technical colleges and an estimated 20,000 high schools.

He co-authored and edited with a group of Ukrainian scholars three editions of a university textbook,   on the fundamentals of democracy (Osnovii Demokrati),  and was series editor for 15 supplementary texts, co-authoring five. He has also written extensively about Canadian politics.

In November 2008, he was elected as an international member of Ukraine's National Academy of Pedagogical Science.

Born in Oxbow, Saskatchewan on June 22, 1928, Stewart Fyfe died peacefully at Briargate Retirement Residence in Amherstview, Ontario on January 30, 2019. 

Stewart graduated with a BA and MA from Queen's and a PhD from Manchester University. Proud of his Scottish heritage and prairie roots, his life was dedicated to 'making a difference'. As a dedicated member of the ����ֱ�� community for over six decades, he taught generations of students about local government, created professional development programs for municipal staff, and provided counseling for students. Working as a consultant and an educator, his work took him to Europe and Russia and across Canada from Newfoundland to Whitehorse. He was heavily involved in local government reform in Ontario, including chairing the Com����ֱ�� which led to the formation of the Waterloo Region.

In Kingston, he was instrumental in the formation of the Art Collection Society and the City's Planning Department, which assisted with neighbourhood improvement projects and the City's early efforts in heritage conservation which became the foundation of the Ontario Heritage Act. For many years he was a member and Chair of Kingston's Planning Committee and the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority. 

Stewart was a voracious reader, avid Gaels football fan and lover of cottage life with his dear family at Lake Sir John and Eagle Lake.  

Catherine M. Conaghan is a specialist in Latin American politics, with a focus on the Andean region. Her research has included extensive fieldwork in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Fujimori’s Peru: Deception in the Public Sphere (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005) is her latest book. Her earlier books are Restructuring Domination: Industrialists and the State in Ecuador (1988) and Unsettling Statecraft: Democracy and Neoliberalism in the Central Andes (with James Malloy, 1994). She has been affiliated with the Center of International Studies at Princeton University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Helen Kellogg Institute of the University of Notre Dame, the North-South Institute of the University of Miami, and the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. She served as visiting Fulbright scholar in Peru in 1997. In 2000, she was appointed as the visiting Knapp Chair in Liberal Arts at the University of San Diego. Her publications include articles in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Research Review, and Studies in Comparative International Development. Her current research, a comparative study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, is entitled, “The Aftermath of Presidential Corruption in Latin America.” She received her doctorate from Yale University.

Brief Biography

Kim Richard Nossal went to school in Melbourne, Beijing, Toronto, and Hong Kong and attended the University of Toronto, receiving his PhD in 1977. In 1976 he joined the Department of Political Science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he taught international relations and Canadian foreign policy, serving as chair of the Department from 1989–90 and 1992-1996. In 2001, he came to Queen’s University, heading the Department of Political Studies until 2009. He served as director of the Centre for International and Defence Policy from 2011 to 2013. From 2013 to 2015, he was the executive director of the Queen’s School of Policy Studies.

He has served as editor of International Journal, the quarterly journal of the Canadian International Council, Canada's institute of international affairs (1992-1997), and was president of the Canadian Political Science Association (2005-2006). He served as chair of the academic selection committee of the Security and Defence Forum of the Department of National Defence from 2006 to 2012. In 2017 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal Military College of Canada. Professor Emeritus Nossal retired from Queen's Department of Political Studies in 2020.

Research Interests

Canadian politics; gender and politics; political communication; political behaviour; media framing of sexual violence; public opinion; and Indigenous politics 

Brief Biography

Elisha is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Studies. She is of Irish and Cherokee descent which deeply informs her program of study. Elisha studies Canadian Politics and Gender and Politics with a focus on the (mis)representation of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) in the media. Her doctoral research focuses on how traditional print media frames and how Indigenous communities frame MMIWG2S affect non-Indigenous Canadians' perceptions of and support for MMIWG2S. She hopes that her research will tell us more about how colonialism and racism perpetuate and silence the violence against Indigenous women and girls through media representation (or lack thereof). She also hopes that her research can be a modest step to decolonizing one of Canada’s oldest institutions: the media.

Elisha is also a passionate teacher, a dedicated researcher, and an advocate for gender equity in her academic and personal life. She is an active member of the Queen’s and Kingston communities at large. She has been an executive member of the Queen’s Female Leadership in Politics Conference since its inaugural year in 2015. She was the 2019 Co-Chair of the Political Studies Graduate Student Association (PSGSA) and in 2018 was the Co-Chair of the 2018 PSGSA annual graduate conference. She is also on the board of directors for the Autism Mentorship Program, a not-for-profit organization.

Teaching

POLS 212- Canadian Politics (Head Teaching Assistant) 

POLS 313- Political Communication (Teaching Assistant)

POLS 384- Research Methods (Teaching Assistant) 

POLS 385 – Introduction to Statistics (Teaching Assistant and Content Developer)

POLS 320 – First Nations Politics (Teaching Assistant)

POLS 367 – American Foreign Policy (Teaching Assistant)

POLS 391 – Electoral Systems (Course Co-Developer)

Research Interests

Canadian Politics; Courts and Politics; Canadian Federalism; Minority and Language Rights and Politics (Canada; UK); Aboriginal Rights

Current research: Official-Language Rights and Aboriginal Rights at the Supreme Court of Canada

Brief Biography

Professor Chouinard grew up in Labrador. She has been teaching at Royal Military College since 2017 and has been cross-appointed at Queen's in 2018. She received her PhD in Political Studies from the University of Ottawa (2016) and was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Law, Université de Montréal, as well as at the Chair of Celtic Languages, Literature, History and Antiquities, University of Edinburgh. She teaches in the fields of Canadian Politics, Comparative Politics, and Political Geography.

Her research interests focus on the relationship between courts and minorities in democratic systems. Her current research focuses on the Supreme Court of Canada's impact on the evolution of official-language rights and Aboriginal self-determination rights. She is also interested in territorial and non-territorial autonomy arrangements for national and linguistic minorities in the world.

Professor Chouinard has published in Ethnopolitics, the Language Rights Review, Linguistic Minorities and Society, and the International Journal of Canadian Studies, among others.

Selected Publications

“The judiciary’s impact and limits in official-language minority education policymaking: The legacy of Section 23”, in: Emmett Macfarlane (ed.), The Policy Impact of the Supreme Court of Canada, University of Toronto Press (forthcoming)

" Les tribunaux, lieu de pouvoir contre-majoritaire? Les minorités face au droit ", in: Karim Benyekhlef, Catherine Régis, and Daniel Weinstock (eds.), Sauvons la justice, Montréal: Del Busso, 2017.

“Quand le droit parle de sciences sociales: l’introduction de la complétude institutionnelle dans le droit linguistique canadien”, Language Rights Review, vol. 3, 2016, 60-93.

“Stateless Nations in a World of Nation-States”, in: Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2016, 54-66.

Research Focus

Terrorism and political violence; Sociology of religion; religion and violence; social movements; religion and politics in the Middle East; Religion and the public sphere; diaspora politics and activism; religion and media/social media; atheism and non-religion; hate movements and the far-right.

Brief Biography

Amarnath Amarasingam is an Assistant Professor in the School of Religion, and is cross-appointed to the Department of Political Studies, at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. He is also a Senior Fellow with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. His research interests are in terrorism, radicalization and extremism, online communities, diaspora politics, post-war reconstruction, and the sociology of religion. He is the author of Pain, Pride, and Politics: Sri Lankan Tamil Activism in Canada (2015), and the co-editor of Sri Lanka: The Struggle for Peace in the Aftermath of War (2016). He has also published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, has presented papers at over 100 national and international conferences, and has written for The New York Times, The Monkey Case, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, The Atlantic, and Foreign Affairs. He has been interviewed on CNN, PBS Newshour, CBC, BBC, and a variety of other media outlets. He tweets at 

Amarasingam is an experienced field researcher, having conducted hundreds of interviews for his PhD dissertation on social movement activism, organizational dynamics, and youth identity in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. He also conducted over 50 interviews with former fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or Tamil Tigers) throughout the former war zones of Sri Lanka in 2013 and 2014. He has also conducted field research in Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Somalia, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. He co-directed a study on foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, based at the University of Waterloo, for six years during which he conducted numerous social media and in-person interviews with current and former foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq, as well as parents and close friends of those who traveled to fight. 

Brief Biography

Dr. Surulola Eke is the latest Peacock Postdoctoral Fellow to join the Department of Political Studies. Working with supervisor Dr. Andrew Grant, his research agenda focuses on the linkages between autochthony, natural resources, and conflicts in West Africa. Dr. Eke has published on these linkages and related security governance themes in several scholarly journals, including Third World Quarterly, Journal of Global Security Studies, Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, Peace Research, and African Security Review. His high-impact scholarship has resulted in many academic awards and fellowships, including the University of Manitoba’s most prestigious doctoral fellowship, which fully funded Dr. Eke’s graduate studies. The importance of Dr. Eke’s research agenda was further affirmed via the recipient of Canada’s most prestigious postdoctoral award, the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, which recognizes scholarly excellence and leadership in academic settings.

Teaching

POLS 380 Puzzles in Political Economy (Winter 2024)

POLS 867 Approaches to Global Governance (Winter 2024)

POLS 494 Topics in Political Studies: Global Climate Governance (Fall 2023)