Below is a list of faculty that are active in the department, and available to students with course specific questions. If you need administrative support, we encourage you to refer your questions to one of the following;

  • The Chair of the department (see below) can address detailed program questions, including program requirements, planning and selection, research opportunities, graduate studies, and more.
  • The Academic Advisor, if available, can offer support including course registration and course load, important dates, academic policies and more.
  • The Academic Deans serve as the academic and administrative anchors to the professors within their Faculties or Schools as well as the students.

Faculty of the Politics and International Studies Department:

Dr. Trygve Ugland

Dr. Trygve Ugland

Full Professor – Department Chairperson

Dr. Trygve Ugland is educated at University of Oslo and Queen’s University of Belfast (Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Oslo). Dr. Ugland is currently serving his third term as Chair of the Department of Politics and International Studies. He has previously served as Secretary General & Vice-Principal Government Relations and Planning at Bishop’s University between 2017 and 2022.

Dr. Ugland’s Research and Publications

Dr. Ugland’s research and teaching interests lie in the fields of Comparative Politics and Comparative Public Policy, with a focus on European and Scandinavian politics and transatlantic relations. In 2017, he won the Division of Social Sciences Teaching Award for excellence in teaching.

His most recent books include Jean Monnet and Canada: Early Travels and the Idea of European Unity (2011, University of Toronto Press) and Policy Learning from Canada: Reforming Scandinavian Immigration and Integration Policies (2018, University of Toronto Press). In 2019, European Integration and Nordic Alcohol Polices was re-published by Routledge (co-authored with H. Holder, E. Kühlhorn, S. Nordlund, E. Österberg and A. Rommelsjö).

Dr. Don Dombowsky

Dr. Don Dombowsky

Full Professor

Don Dombowsky did his graduate study at the University of Ottawa and the New School for Social Research in New York. He has taught a wide range of courses for the Politics and International Studies, Philosophy and Liberal Arts programs on selected topics in the history and theory of politics, philosophy and art. He was nominated for the William & Nancy Turner Teaching Award in 2011 and received a Teaching Merit Award for his Classical Political Philosophy II course in 2012. In 2019 he was nominated for a Bishop’s Teaching Award.

Dr. Dombowsky’s Research

Professor Dombowsky’s research deals primarily with the political thought of Friedrich Nietzsche for which he is internationally recognized. He is the author of Nietzsche’s Machiavellian Politics (2004) and co-editor of Political Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Edited Anthology (2008). He has also published articles in the Journal of Nietzsche Studies and Nietzsche Studien: Internationales Jahrbuch für die Nietzsche-Forschung as well as in other Canadian and European journals. In April of 2011 he was awarded a SSHRC Research Grant for his study of Nietzsche and Napoleon published as Nietzsche and Napoleon: The Dionysian Conspiracy (University of Wales Press, 2014).

Dr. Dombowsky’s Publications

Books

Nietzsche and Napoleon: The Dionysian Conspiracy (University of Wales Press, 2014).

Co-editor, Political Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Edited Anthology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Nietzsche’s Machiavellian Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Book Chapters

‘Les sources du Napoléon de Nietzsche’. In: Martine Béland (ed.). Lectures nietzschéennes. Sources et réceptions. (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, coll. “Pensée allemande et européenne”, 2015), 163-199.

‘Aristocratic Radicalism as a Species of Bonapartism’. In: Manuel Knoll and Barry Stocker (eds.). Nietzsche as Political Philosopher (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 195-209.

‘A Response to Alan D. Schrift’s “Nietzsche For Democracy?”’ (2002). Reprinted in: Tracy Strong (ed.). International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought – Friedrich Nietzsche. (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2009), 109-121.

‘Nietzsche as Bonapartist’. In: Herman W. Siemens and V. Roodt (eds.). Nietzsche, Power and Politics: Rethinking Nietzsche’s Legacy for Political Thought. (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 347-369.

Recent Journal Articles

‘“The Last Metaphysician”: Heidegger on Nietzsche’s Politics’. The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms. Vol. 23. Issue 6. 2018, pp. 628-642.

‘Ian Curtis and the German Autumn’. Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination. Volume 7. Nos. 1 & 2. Spring 2018, pp. 31-49.

Recent Paper Presentations

‘Symbolic Insurrection: Eternal Recurrence as an Instrument of Appropriation’. Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy Conference, Bishop’s University, September 26-28, 2019.

‘Nietzsche as Viewed by the European New Right’. Conference on Nietzsche’s Critique of Values and its Reception. Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Nietzsche-Kommentar, University of Freiburg, Germany, June 4-5, 2019.

‘Nietzsche’s Bonapartism and the Displacement of the Nomadic Reconstruction’. Symposium on Nietzsche, Politics and Values. Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Nietzsche-Kommentar, University of Freiburg, Germany, May 16, 2018.

‘Heidegger’s Defining of Nietzsche’s Politics’. Symposium on Nietzsche’s Social and Political Thought. Bishop’s University, September 15, 2017.

‘Nietzsche’s Bonapartism’. Philosophisches Kolloquium. University of Konstanz, Germany, May 7, 2015.

‘Aristocratic Radicalism as a Species of Bonapartism’. MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory. Ninth Annual Conference. Nietzsche and Political Theory. University of Manchester, U.K., Sept. 5-7, 2012.

Dr. Gilbert Gagné

Dr. Gilbert Gagné

Full Professor

Dr. Gilbert Gagné has been Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Bishop’s University since 2001. Since 2003, he has also been the Director of the Research Group on Continental Integration at the Université du Québec à Montréal. In 2007-2008, he received a Canada-U.S. Fulbright Award and held the Visiting Research Chair in Canadian Studies at Duke University. Dr. Gagné holds a Doctorate in International Relations from the University of Oxford and Master’s and Bachelor’s Degrees in Political Science from the University of Ottawa.

Dr. Gagné’s Research

Dr. Gagné’s research pertains mainly to international economic regimes and organizations, North American integration, the treatment of cultural products in trade agreements; subsidies and trade dispute settlement, with a particular emphasis on the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute; as well as the protection of foreign investment and investor-state dispute settlement.

Funding Sources

  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture
  • Senate Research Committee, Bishop’s University
Dr. Gagné’s Publications

Dr. Gagné’s research contributions include:

Gagné, Gilbert and Michèle Rioux (eds), NAFTA 2.0: From the first NAFTA to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

Gagné, Gilbert, “The Evolution of Canada’s Cultural Exemption in Preferential Trade Agreements”, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2020, pp. 298-312.

Gagné, Gilbert and Guy-Philippe Wells, “The Treatment of Cultural Services in Asian Countries’ Preferential Trade Agreements”, Manchester Journal of International Economic Law, Vol. 16, No. 3, December 2019, pp. 359-388.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Trade and Culture: The United States”, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 25, No. 5, 2019, pp. 615-628.

Gagné, Gilbert, “The Canadian Policy on the Protection of Foreign Investment and the Canada-China Bilateral Investment Treaty”, Beijing Law Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2019, pp. 361-377.

Gagné, Gilbert, “L’interface commerce-culture et la question du règlement des différends”, Revue québécoise de droit international, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2017, pp. 75-94.

Gagné, Gilbert, The Trade and Culture Debate: Evidence from US Trade Agreements, Lanham: MD: Lexington Books, 2016, 163 pp.

Gagné, Gilbert, “The World Trading Regime and Dispute Settlement”, in Greg Anderson and Christopher Kukucha (eds), International Political Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 186-206.

Rioux, Michèle, Christian Deblock, Gilbert Gagné, Destiny Tchehouali, Kim Fontaine-Skronski, and Antonios Vlassis, Pour une culture en réseaux diversifiée. Appliquer la convention sur la protection et la promotion de la diversité des expressions culturelles à l’ère du numérique, Report submitted to the ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Développement international and to the ministère de la Culture et de la Communication of France, Montreal, February 2015, 129 pp.

Gagné, Gilbert, “The World Trade Organization and Dispute Settlement: Too Much for Litigation”, University of New Brunswick Law Journal, Vol. 65, 2014, pp. 191-212.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Free Trade, Cultural Policies, and the Digital Revolution: Evidence from the U.S. FTAs with Australia and South Korea”, Asian Journal of WTO & International Health Law and Policy, Vol. 9, No. 1, March 2014, pp. 257-286.

Gagné, Gilbert and Michel Paulin, “The Softwood Lumber Dispute and the US Allegations of Improper NAFTA Panel Review”, American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3, Autumn 2013, pp. 413-423.

Gagné, Gilbert, “The U.S. Policy on the Protection of Foreign Investment: From the NAFTA to the U.S.-Korea FTA”, The Journal of World Investment & Trade, Vol. 12, No. 6, December 2011, pp. 807-825.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Free Trade and Cultural Policies: Evidence from Three US Agreements”, Journal of World Trade, Vol. 45, No. 6, December 2011, pp. 1267-1284.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Regional Economic Dynamics”, in Christopher Kirkey, Jarrett Rudy, and Stephan Gervais (eds), Québec Questions: Québec Studies for the 21st Century, Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 371-382.

Gagné, Gilbert and Laurent Viau, “Le Québec après 20 ans de libre-échange avec les États-Unis”, in Guy Lachapelle (ed.), Le destin américain du Québec: américanité, américanisation et anti-américanisme, Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2010, pp. 157-182.

Gagné, Gilbert and Éric Jasmin, “Les politiques forestières du Québec et le commerce «loyal»: le différend sur le bois d’oeuvre”, Canadian Public Policy, Vol. 36, No. 1, March 2010, pp. 91-106.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Le rôle du Québec dans la promotion de la diversité culturelle et linguistique au sein des organisations internationales: Obtenir l’appui de la communauté internationale sans en faire partie”, in Robert Laliberté (ed.), À la rencontre d’un Québec qui bouge: Introduction générale au Québec, Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 2009, pp. 265-277.

Gagné, Gilbert and François Roch, “The US-Canada Softwood Lumber Dispute and the WTO Definition of Subsidy”, World Trade Review, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2008, pp. 547-572.

Gagné, Gilbert, “La Convention sur la protection et la promotion de la diversité des expressions culturelles et l’interface culture – commerce”, in Guy Lachapelle (ed.), Diversité culturelle, identités et mondialisation: de la ratification à la mise en oeuvre de la convention sur la diversité culturelle, Quebec City: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008, pp. 77-89.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Policy Diversity, State Autonomy, and the US-Canada Softwood Lumber Dispute: Philosophical and Normative Aspects”, Journal of World Trade, Vol. 41, No. 4, August 2007, pp. 699-730.

Gagné, Gilbert and Jean-Frédéric Morin, “What Can Best Explain the Prevalence of Bilateralism in the Investment Regime?”, International Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 53-74

Gagné, Gilbert and Jean-Frédéric Morin, “The Evolving American Policy on Investment Protection: Evidence From Recent FTAs and the 2004 Model BIT”, Journal of International Economic Law, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2006, pp. 357-382.

Gagné, Gilbert (ed.), La diversité culturelle: vers une convention internationale effective?, Montreal: Fides, 2005, 215 pp.

Gagné, Gilbert, “L’identité québécoise et l’intégration continentale”, Politique et Sociétés, Vol. 23, Nos. 2-3, 2004, pp. 45-68.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Le règlement des différends”, in Dorval Brunelle and Christian Deblock (eds), L’ALENA: le libre-échange en défaut, Montreal: Fides, 2004, pp. 299-323.

Gagné, Gilbert, René Côté, and Christian Deblock, Les récents accords de libre-échange conclus par les États-Unis : une menace à la diversité culturelle, Report submitted to the Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie, June 2004, 68pp.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Cultural Sovereignty, Identity, and North American Integration: on the Relevance of the U.S.-Canada-Quebec Border”, Québec Studies, Vol. 36, Fall 2003/Winter 2004, pp. 29-49.

Gagné, Gilbert, “The Canada-US Softwood Lumber Dispute: A Test Case for the Development of International Trade Rules”, International Journal, Vol. 58, No. 3, Summer 2003, pp. 335-368.

Lachapelle, Guy and Gilbert Gagné, “Intégration économique, valeurs et identités: les attitudes matérialistes et postmatérialistes des Québécois”, Politique et Sociétés, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2003, pp. 27-52.

Gagné, Gilbert. 2002. “Canada-US Border and Culture: How to ensure Canadian cultural sovereignty.” Canadian Foreign Policy, 9(2), 159-170.

Gagné, Gilbert, “North American Integration and Canadian Culture”, in George Hoberg (ed.), Capacity For Choice: Canada in a New North America, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002, pp. 159-183.

Gagné, Gilbert, “The Investor-State Provisions in the Aborted MAI and in NAFTA: Issues and Prospects”, The Journal of World Investment, Vol. 2, No. 3, September 2001, pp. 481-505.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Mondialisation, régionalisation et questions identitaires: le Canada, le Québec et l’exception culturelle”, Revue québécoise de droit international, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2000, pp. 277-288.

Gagné, Gilbert, “International Trade Rules and States: Enhanced Authority for the WTO?”, in Richard A. Higgott, Geoffrey R.D. Underhill, and Andreas Bieler (eds), Non-State Actors and Authority in the Global System, London/New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 226-240.

Gagné, Gilbert, “North American Free Trade, Canada, and US Trade Remedies: An Assessment After Ten Years”, The World Economy, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 2000, pp. 77-91.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Libéralisation et exception culturelle: le différend canado-américain sur les périodiques”, Études internationales, Vol. 30, No. 3, September 1999, pp. 571-588.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Libre-échange, souveraineté et américanité: une nouvelle Trinité pour le Québec?”, Politique et Sociétés, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1999, pp. 99-107.

Gagné, Gilbert, “The Canada-US Softwood Lumber Dispute – An Assessment after 15 Years”, Journal of World Trade, Vol. 33, No. 1, February 1999, pp. 67-86.

Gagné, Gilbert, “Les subventions et les droits compensateurs: de nécessaires améliorations aux dispositions de l’ALÉNA”, Canadian Foreign Policy, Vol. 3, No. 3, Winter 1995, pp. 71-85.

Dr. Sarah-Myriam Martin-Brûlé

Dr. Sarah-Myriam Martin-Brûlé

Associate Professor

Sarah-Myriam Martin-Brûlé is an Associate Professor at Bishop’s University, a Non-Resident Fellow at the International Peace Institute, and a consultant for the UN Peacekeeping-Intelligence Coordination Team. 3M 2021 National Teaching fellow, she is research leader for the Réseau d’analyse stratégique-Network on Strategic Analysis, Deputy Director of the Réseau de recherche sur les opérations de paix, and the 2018–2019 Canada Fulbright Research Chair for Peace and War Studies. She is an associate faculty member of the Center for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS) and of the Montreal Center for International Studies (CERIUM). Her research focuses on peacekeeping-intelligence.

Dr. Martin-Brûlé’s Publications

Her most recent publications include “Competing for Trust: Challenges in UN Peacekeeping-Intelligence“ and  “Finding the UN Way on Peacekeeping-Intelligence”. Co-author of the first United Nations Field Handbook on Joint Mission Analysis Centres, she recently conducted fieldwork at the MINUSCA (Central African Republic), MINUSMA (Mali), MONUSCO (Democratic Republic of Congo) and UNMISS (South Sudan). She is co-hosting with Dr. Thomas Juneau the first francophone podcast in Canada addressing defense and security issues, “Conseils de sécurité” a co-production of the Canadian and Defense Security Network and the Network for Strategic Analysis.

Dr. Heather McKeen-Edwards

Dr. Heather McKeen-Edwards

Associate Professor

Dr. Heather McKeen-Edwards completed a Ph.D. in Political Science from McMaster University in 2009. Her research interests revolve around global political economy, particularly issues in finance and transnational public-private governance, and global sport policy and she has co-authored a book with Tony Porter, Transnational Financial Associations and the Governance of Global Finance: Assembling Wealth and Power (Routledge, 2013), which examines the impact that transnational financial associations have on global financial practices. Her recent work focuses on policies and regulations around consumer finance and household debt as well as the discourses employed by central banks. Her other current project involves policy making in sport in Canada, particularly the roles and representation of officials (umpires, referees, judges, etc.). At Bishop’s she teaches a range of courses in international political economy, public policy and sport.

Dr. Jacob Robbins-Kanter

Dr. Jacob Robbins-Kanter

Assistant Professor

Dr. Jacob Robbins-Kanter obtained a PhD in Political Studies from Queen’s University in 2021 (M.A. Political Studies, Queen’s; H.B.A. Political Science, McGill). He is a Canadian politics specialist whose research focuses on political parties, political communication, and representation. He is currently preparing a book manuscript based on his doctoral dissertation. The book examines the relationship between local campaigns and party headquarters during Canadian federal elections. He is also developing an edited book that examines the representation of Canadians from working-class backgrounds in federal parties and institutions. Dr. Robbins-Kanter has taught a variety of courses in the fields of Canadian and Comparative politics. He is an associate faculty member of the Groupe de recherche en communication politique (GRCP) and the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity (CSDD).