Call for Papers

‘In Testing Times: Crisis and Adaptation in Canadian Foreign Policy History’

We invite paper proposals on crises in Canadian foreign policy history, broadly conceived.

The Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto and the Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism at St. Jerome’s University/University of Waterloo will host a one-day workshop in June 2027, focusing on the role of foreign policy crises in Canadian history. The goal of the workshop is to promote the ongoing development and expansion of Canadian foreign/defence relations scholarship through the prism of how successive governments dealt with challenging international crises. Speaking to the World Economic Forum this past February, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a stark assessment of what he regarded as the collapse of the post-1945 rules based order as the Trump administration reshapes global politics and trade to reflect its own ‘realist’ worldview. In response, the Prime Minister bluntly observed that Canada and other like-minded nations must rapidly adjust to this new security and trade environment.

The demise of the post 1945 rules based order – predicated on support for multilateral institutions ranging from the United Nations to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the principle of collective security – had underpinned much of Canadian foreign policy.  It is within this context that the workshop asks whether previous foreign policy crisis can help us to navigate more recent challenges to Canada’s foreign policy?  Papers will examine why and how Canadian leaders and officials reacted to pivotal international crises and how they also devised policies to protect, manage, and cultivate Canadian international interests during such crisis sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The aim is to eventually publish the presented draft papers in a peer-reviewed edited collection with UBC Press. We encourage submissions dealing with a wide range of topics which speak to how successive Canadian governments reacted to and addressed major foreign policy crises throughout the twentieth century and into the first decade of the new millennium. Papers might address:

•   Canada at the League of Nations

•   Canada and the World Wars

•   Canada and the Cold War world

•   Canada and peacekeeping/United Nations

•   Canada and Asia

•   Activism in Canada

•   Relations with the United States

•   Canadian foreign policy and national unity

•   Canada and Latin America

•   Canada and Africa

•   Canada and the environment

•   Nuclear non-proliferation

•   International terrorism

•   Intelligence assessments and monitoring

Please send paper proposals with a working title (proposals should be 350 words maximum) and an updated CV directly to Drs. Jack Cunningham (stewartjohncunningham@hotmail.com) and Ryan Touhey (ryan.touhey@uwaterloo.ca) by Tuesday June 30th, 2026. Those selected will be informed by mid-July 2026.