Photo of Norman Hillmer

Norman Hillmer

Chancellor's Professor (History and International Affairs)

Phone:613-520-2600 x 2828
Email:norman.hillmer@carleton.ca
Office:446 Paterson Hall

Chancellor’s Professor (History and International Affairs)
20th c. diplomatic and political history; military affairs and defence policy; Anglo-Canadian and Canadian-American relations; politics and leadership; peace operations and conflict resolution.

Professor Hillmer is accepting graduate students for Canadian history and welcomes inquiries about specific areas of supervision.

Book Project

  • Canadian Peacekeeping: A Contradictory History (under contract to University of British Columbia Press)

Recent Honours and Awards

  • Elected, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 2019
  • Senior Visiting Fellow, Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, 2019-2020
  • Research Achievement Award, Carleton University, 2017 (for 2018-2019)
  • Order of Canada, 2016
  • Charles P. Stacey Prize, 2015-2016
  • Finalist (for OD. 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, 2008-2018

  • 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), 320-341 [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), 258-268.
  • “Parliament Will Decide: An Interplay of Politics and Principle,” International Journal, vol. 71, 2 (2016), 328–337 [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), 242-263 [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, 2012-2019

  • 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.