Practitioner
Joël Plouffe is advisor for the Arctic Council Secretariat. He is also a researcher at CIRRICQ (Center for Interuniversity Research on the International Relations of Canada and Québec) at the École nationale d’administration publique (ENAP) in Montréal, managing editor of the Arctic Yearbook. His research interests include security and defense, geopolitics of the Arctic, regions of the circumpolar North, Northern Québec, and U.S.-Canada relations and foreign policy. Mr Plouffe has conducted research in the Arctic regions of Russia, the US (Alaska), Norway (Svalbard and mainland), Finland, Sweden and Canada (Nunavik, Northwest Territories). He is a Fellow of The Canadian Global…
Researcher
Maria Popova is an Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University, the Scientific Co-Director of the Jean Monnet Center Montreal and Editor of the Cambridge Elements Series on Politics and Society from Central Europe to Central Asia. She held the Jean Monnet Chair “Europe and the Rule of Law” in 2017-2021. Her work focuses on rule of law and democracy in Europe. Her award-winning book Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies (Cambridge UP, 2012) examines the weaponization of law to manipulate elections and control the media and the obstacles to judicial independence in Russia and Ukraine in the late-1990s-early 2000s.…
Researcher
Mark Purdon is Associate Professor in the Department of Strategy, Social and Environmental Responsibility at the School of Management (ESG), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), where he has held the Chair on Decarbonization. With a PhD in political science, he works at the intersection of comparative politics, international relations, and public policy, studying the political economy of decarbonization, with particular attention to carbon markets, climate finance, and green industrial policy. His work on global climate governance draws on neoclassical realism to explain how domestic politics and international power shape climate action and opportunities for international climate cooperation. His applied…
Collaborator
Maud Quessard is Research Director at the Institute for Strategic Research of the French War College (IRSEM), where she has headed the Europe, Transatlantic Space and Russia programme since 2020, and Associate Professor of American foreign policy. She holds a PhD in North American studies from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University (2009) and was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Department of History and Belfer Center in 2015. Her work addresses United States public diplomacy and influence strategies, information warfare, and the contemporary transformations of American power. She co-directs the Observatory of American Foreign Policy with Jean-Baptiste Velut, co-leads the ANR…
Emerging Scholar
Matthew Rainsford is a fifth year undergraduate student at Bishop’s University, pursuing an honours in Political Studies and a major in International Relations. Matthew was a part of the 2020 Model United Nations Delegation and represented Bishop’s University at the Political Science Games for the first through third years of his studies. Matthew runs the Bishop’s University Debate society, while also being the director of human resources at Bishop’s university’s entrepreneurship club; Enactus. In the fourth year of his studies, Matthew was hired to be a coordinator for the fourth edition of the Quebec Undergraduate Security Conference under the supervision…
Emerging Scholar
Lou Raisonnier holds a master's degree in international security from the School of International Affairs at Sciences Po Paris and a bachelor's degree in political science and Islamic studies from McGill University. She is currently a doctoral candidate in political science (comparative politics and political theory) at the University of Ottawa's École d'Études Politiques, under the supervision of Frédéric Vairel. Her doctoral thesis focuses on how French institutions (both security and administrative) deal with the return of women involved in the Islamic State organization in the Iraqi-Syrian zone. Having lived in New Zealand, France and Canada, Lou is fluent in…
Practitioner
Camille Raymond is a Policy Officer in the Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy) organization of the Department of National Defence. She holds a master's degree in Political Science from the University of Quebec in Montreal, under the supervision of Justin Massie. Her master's research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Department of National Defence's MINDS program. Her thesis focused on the adaptation of Canadian defence and foreign policy to power transitions. Her research interests include Canadian foreign and defence policy, NORAD modernization, Canada-US relations, and Canadian military contributions. She has also worked…
Fellow researcher
Yf Reykers is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. He is also Co-Editor of the journal Contemporary Security Policy. Yf obtained his PhD from KU Leuven. He was a visiting scholar at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at European University Institute, at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, and at Aarhus University. Yf studies issues relating to European security and defence. For the moment, he focuses in particular on the role of ad hoc coalitions in international security and different forms of European defence cooperation.…
Researcher
Dr. Gaëlle Rivard Piché is a strategic analyst with Defence Research and Development Canada where she works closely with the Canadian Armed Forces, providing direct decision-making support through evidence-based research on a wide range of topics. She is currently a fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (Carleton University), where she completed her Ph.D. in International Affairs in 2017. She is also a guest lecturer at the Canadian Forces College and works as a consultant for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on security sector reform and peace operations. During her doctoral studies, Dr. Rivard Piché was a Fulbright…
Practitioner
Rhita Ronda is a Policy Officer in the Assistant Deputy Minister's Branch of the Department of National Defence. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Public Affairs and International Relations from Laval University and a Master's degree in International Studies with a concentration in cultures, conflicts and peace from the University of Montreal. She completed her internship under the supervision of Professor Marie-Joëlle Zahar. Before starting her master’s degree, she completed an intership at the Bureau of the United Nations and International Organizations of the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also worked as a research assistant at Queen's University and…
