Norman Hillmer
Chancellor's Professor (History and International Affairs) -international history; Canadian foreign and defence policy; Canada and the United States; British-Canadian relations and the Commonwealth; peace operations and conflict resolution; Canadian politics; political leadership and political culture.
| Degrees: | B.A. (Toronto), M.A. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Cambridge) |
| Email: | norman.hillmer@carleton.ca |
| Office: | 446 Paterson Hall |
Book Projects
Canadian Peacekeeping: A Contradictory History (University of British Columbia Press)
Canada Among Nations 2024: Canada and the New National Security (Palgrave Macmillan)
Recent Honours and Awards
Elected, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 2019
Senior Fellow, Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, University of Toronto, 2019-
Research Achievement Award, Carleton University, 2017 (for 2018-2019)
Order of Canada, 2016
Charles P. Stacey Prize, 2015-2016
Finalist (for O. D. Skelton: A Portrait of Canadian Ambition): Canada Prize in the Humanities, 2015; Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, 2016; John W. Dafoe Book Prize, 2016; and Ottawa Book Award, 2016.
William Goodenough Association of Canada (Goodenough College), Benefactors’ Award, 2014
Visitor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, 2013
Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, 2012
Select Publications, 2008-2023
“Canada’s Diplomatic Autobiographers and the Burden of History, 1928-1984,” in Greg Donaghy and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, eds., People, Politics, and Purpose: Biography and Canadian Political History (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2023), 26-47 [with Robert Bothwell].
“The Presidents and the Polls: An Inquiry into Canadian Anti-Americanism, 1963-2021,” American Review of Canadian Studies, 52, 4 (2022), 381-401 [with Stephen Azzi].
“Ranking Prime Ministers: Canada in a Commonwealth Context,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 49, 1 (2021), 22–43 [with Stephen Azzi].
“Growing Up Autonomous: Canada and Britain through the First World War and into the Peace,” in Tim Cook and J. L. Granatstein, eds., Canada 1919: A Country Shaped By War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020), 234-47.
“Celebrating Greg Donaghy,” International Journal, 75, 4 (2020), 464-470 [with Robert Bothwell and John English].
Editor, Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy: Canada Among Nations 2017 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), xv, 310 [with Philippe Lagassé].
“The Age of Trudeau and Trump,” in Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy, 1-16 [with Philippe Lagassé].
“Different Leader, Different Paths: Diefenbaker and the British, 1957-1963,” in Janice Cavell and Ryan M. Touhey, eds., Reassessing the Rogue Tory: Canadian Foreign Relations in the Diefenbaker Era (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2018), 45-64.
“Pearson and Environmental Diplomacy,” in Asa McKercher and Galen Roger Perras, eds., Mike’s World: Lester B. Pearson and Canadian External Affairs (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017), 320-41 [with Daniel Macfarlane and Michael W. Manulak].
“Intolerant Allies: Canada and the George W. Bush Administration, 2001-2005,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 27, 4 (2016), 726-45 [with Stephen Azzi].
“The Prime Minister of the Few,” in Adam Chapnick and Christopher Kukucha, eds., The Harper Era in Canadian Foreign Policy: Parliament, Politics, and Canada’s Global Posture (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2016), 258-68.
“Parliament Will Decide: An Interplay of Politics and Principle,” International Journal, 71, 2 (2016), 328–37 [with Philippe Lagassé].
O. D. Skelton: A Portrait of Canadian Ambition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), xii, 424.
Editor, O. D. Skelton: The Work of the World, 1923-1941 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press and The Champlain Society; both editions, 2013), xx, 55 page introduction, 517 pp.
“Evaluating Prime Ministerial Leadership in Canada: The Results of an Expert Survey,” Canadian Political Science Review, 7, 1 (2013), 13-23 [with Stephen Azzi].
“Evaluating Prime-Ministerial Performance: The Canadian Experience”, in Paul Strangio, Paul ‘t Hart, and James Walter, eds., Understanding Prime-Ministerial Performance: Comparative Perspectives (London: Oxford University Press, 2012), 242-63 [with Stephen Azzi].
“National Independence and the National Interest: O. D. Skelton’s Department of External Affairs in the 1920s,” in Greg Donaghy and Michael K. Carroll, eds., In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909-2009 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2011), 11-26.
“The Canadian War Museum and the Military Identity of an Unmilitary People,” Canadian Military History, XIX, 3 (Summer 2010), 19-26.
“O. D. Skelton: Innovating for Independence,” in Greg Donaghy and Kim Richard Nossal, eds., Architects and Innovators: Building the Department of External Affairs and International Trade, 1909-2009/ Le développement du ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Commerce international, de 1909 à 2009 (Montreal and Kingston: School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University/ McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009), 59-73.
Canada’s International Policies: Agendas, Alternatives, and Politics (Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2008) [with Brian W. Tomlin and Fen Osler Hampson], vi, 432.
Completed Graduate Supervisions, 2012-2024
Glenn Philip, “Atoms for Peace: Canada, India, and the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, 1953-1956,” M. A. Research Essay, History 2024.
Renée Lauzon-Cherniak, “‘If I Had Thousands of Victoria Crosses’: Stretcher Bearer Training in the Canadian Army Medical Corps in the First World War,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2024.
Kieran Alen Yazar McClelland, “Third Place in the Space Race: Securitizing Rhetoric, the Logic of Threat, and the Securitization of the Canadian Civil Space Program,” Ph.D., Political Science, 2024 (Dissertation Committee).
Sarah Catherine Catterall, “The Kandahar Cenotaph, Commemoration, and the Politics of Place,” M. A. Research Essay, History, 2022.
Ann Walton, “A Family Home for Toronto’s Aged Poor: The Social Service Mission of Strachan House, 1925-1958,” Ph.D., History, 2022.
Christian McGregor, “‘For Good or for Evil’: The Early Atomic Age in Maclean’s, Saturday Night, Life, and The Saturday Evening Post, 1945-1950,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2022.
Susan R. Hagborg Wildey, “The South African Information Service and English-Canadian Journalism, 1949-1960,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2021.
Michael Cesare Chiarello, “The Course and Canon of Left Nationalism in English Canada, 1968-1979,” Ph.D., History, 2020.
Camus Clowater-Eriksson, “Integration: Women in the Canadian Air Force, An Audio Documentary,” M. A. Research Essay, History, 2020.
Nancy Carvell, “A People Apart: New Brunswick Acadians, Conscription, and the Second World War,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2019.
Angus McCabe, “Canada’s Response to the 1968 Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia: An Assessment of the Trudeau Government’s First International Crisis,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2019.
Philip Michael Lamancusa, “The Canadian War Museum’s 1812: A Question of Perspective,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2019.
Ian Wereley, “Imagining the Age of Oil: Case Studies in British Petrocultures, 1865-1935,” Ph.D., History, 2018 (Dissertation Committee).
Claude LeBlanc, “Maurice A. Pope: A Study in Military Leadership,” Ph.D., War Studies, The Royal Military College of Canada, 2018.
Mallory Pierce, “What a Country!”: English-Canadian Newspapers, Humanitarian Exceptionalism, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,” M. A. Research Essay, History, 2018.
Karly Deanna Hurlock, “For Peaceful Purposes: Indo-Canadian Relations, Development Assistance, and the Bomb in the 1970s,” M. A. Research Essay, History, 2018.
Larysa Lubka-Lewyckyj, “A Delicate Balance (Although Not Always): Maclean’s Views the United States, 1958-1963,” M. A. Research Essay, History, 2018.
Sarah Hogenbirk, “Women Inside the Canadian Military, 1938-1966,” Ph.D., History, 2017
Nicole Marion, “Canada’s Disarmers: The Complicated Struggle Against Nuclear Weapons, 1959-1963,” Ph.D., History, 2017.
Kurtis W. Montgomery, “Saturday Night and the New Yorking of Toronto in 1897,” M. A. Research Essay, History, 2017.
Ian Leonard Weatherall, “Canada’s Defence Policies, 1987-1993: NATO, Operational Viability, and the Good Ally,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2017.
Alan J. Stephenson, “Canadian National Security Culture: Explaining Post 9/11 Canadian National Security Policy Outcomes,” Ph.D., Political Science, 2016 (Dissertation Committee).
John Valentine, “Football, Nationalism, and Protectionism: The Federal Defence of the Canadian Football League,” Ph.D., Canadian Studies, 2016 (Dissertation Committee).
Paige Mcdonald, “If Japan Should Attack: Perceptions of Fear and Threat in British Columbia’s Newspapers, 1941-1943,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2016.
Andrew Sopko, “An (Im)Balance of Expectations: Civil Defence in Ottawa, 1951-1962.” M. A. Thesis, History, 2015.
Richard Newport, “The Outsider: Elizabeth P. MacCallum, the Canadian Department of External Affairs, and the Palestine Mandate to 1947,” Ph.D., History, 2014.
Meghan Stewart, “Peacekeeping and the Canadian War Museum: Complexity, Controversy, and Challenging Mythology,” M. A. Research Essay, History, 2014.
Sarah Dougherty, “Establishing Meaning: The Founding Stories of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival,” M. A. Research Essay, History, 2014.
David Tough, “The Rhetoric of Dominion Income Taxation and the Modern Political Imaginary in Canada, 1910-1945,” Ph.D., History, 2013 (Dissertation Committee).
Anthony P. Michel, “The Nile Voyageurs: Recognizing Canada’s Role in the Empire, 1884-1885,” Ph.D., History, 2012.
Michel Legault, “Lowered, Shipped, and Fastened: Private Grief and the Public Sphere in Canada’s Afghanistan War,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2012.
Malcolm E. O. Ferguson, “Canada’s Response: The Making and Remaking of the Canadian War Memorial,” M. A. Thesis, History, 2012.