Event Date: December 5, 2024 - 9:00am to 5:00pm
Location: FSS 4007, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Watch the keynote address by William C. Wohlforth here:

Presented by CIPS, UQAM and MINDS

The conference, which will bring together leading academics and practitioners, will focus on some of the most pressing challenges facing Canada and its NATO allies as the Alliance seeks to respond to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and, more broadly, to adapt to what is widely perceived as a new era of instability. The conference will provide an opportunity for participants and guests to assess recent developments relevant to the strengthening of the eastern flank, to examine their likely implications, and to identify possible steps/opportunities for addressing current challenges/limitations and strengthening the ability of NATO to exercise deterrence and defence functions in the future. The conference will address not only developments on the eastern flank but also broader dynamics that shape those developments, such as the security situation in the Balkans and recent electoral outcomes in key member states.

Agenda

9:00am-9:15am: Welcome

• Professor Alexandra Gheciu, CIPS Director
• Professor Srdjan Vucetic, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs

9:15am-12:00pm: Panel I & II

Panel I – 9:15am-10:30am

Allies and Adversaries: Changes and Challenges?

• Chair: Srdjan Vucetic (uOttawa)
• Panelists: Rebecca Moore (Concordia College, MN); Anessa Kimball (Laval); Steve Saideman (NPSIA, Carleton University); Jan Claudius Völkel (DAAD Professor, uOttawa)

Coffee break – 10:30am-10:45am

Panel II – 10:45am-12:00pm

NATO Diplomacy in Practice

• Chair: Alexandra Gheciu (uOttawa)
• Panelists: Julie Dzerowicz (Member of Parliament for Davenport, Ontario; Chair of the Canada-NATO Parliamentary Association); Kerry Buck (GSPIA, University of Ottawa); Andrii Bukvych (Embassy of Ukraine)

12:00pm-2:00pm: Keynote Address and Lunch

The USA: A Reliable NATO Ally?

• William C. Wohlforth, the Daniel Webster Professor of Government, Department of Government, Dartmouth College, NH

2:00pm-4:45pm: Panel III & IV

Panel III – 2:00pm-3:15pm

Atlanticism, Crypto-Atlanticism, Anti-Atlanticism

• Chair: Srdjan Vucetic (uOttawa)
• Panelists: Aida A. Hozic (University of Florida), Filip Ejdus (University of Belgrade); Roman Krakovsky (Chair in Slovak History and Culture, uOttawa); and Srdjan Vucetic (uOttawa)

Coffee break – 3:15pm-3:30pm

Panel IV – 3:30pm-4:45pm

The Science of Threat Perceptions 

• Chair: Alexandra Gheciu (uOttawa)
• Panelists: Barbora Tallova (Oxford); Nick Arndt (Oxford); Wiktor Andrzejewski (University of Warsaw); Justin Massie (UQAM)

4:45pm-5:00pm – Concluding Remarks

Speakers:

Wiktor Andrzejewski is a PhD student at the University of Warsaw in the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies. His research interests include voting behavior, with a particular focus on economic voting, as well as international security issues.

Nick Arndt is a master’s student in International Relations at the University of Oxford, specializing in German foreign and defence policy. His research on strategic culture and ontological security focuses on how historical experiences shape security policy today.

Kerry Buck was, upon her retirement from the Canadian public service, Assistant Secretary, Economic Sector at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Prior to that appointment, she was Canada’s Ambassador to the North Atlantic Council (NATO). She held senior executive positions at Global Affairs Canada: Political Director and Assistant Deputy Minister for International Security and Political Affairs; Assistant Deputy Minister portfolios for Africa and for Latin America and the Caribbean; head of the Afghanistan Task Force; Director General for the Middle East and Maghreb, for Afghanistan and for Public Diplomacy and Federal-Provincial Affairs; Director for Human Rights. Outside of GAC, Kerry served, among other positions, in the Privy Council Office as Director of Operations for Machinery of Government Secretariat responsible for Cabinet and Ministerial mandates. Kerry holds degrees from the University of Western Ontario (BA Hons, Political Science) and McGill University (LLB, BCL).

Elected in 2015, Julie Dzerowicz is the first female Member of Parliament to represent the riding of Davenport. She was re-elected in 2019 and in 2021. She serves on the House of Commons Parliamentary Finance Committee and also is the Chair of the Canada-NATO Parliamentary Association. Julie will be leading the upcoming 70th Annual Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Montreal from November 22 to 25. Julie also serves as the Chair of the National Immigration and Refugee Caucus, the Vice-Chair of the Canadian Section of ParlAmericas. She also leads a number of parliamentary friendship groups currently serving as Chair of Canada-Mexico; Chair of Canada-Brazil, Co-Chair of the Canada-Portugal, and is on the Executive Committee of the Canada-Ukraine. Julie is the child of immigrant parents who fled their respective countries due to poverty, war and discrimination; and who came to Canada to find a safe place to raise their children. From her parents Julie learned the importance of hard work and education as a means to achieving one’s full potential. Through political leadership and community engagement, she is using her talents and skills to give back to the country that gave her family a new home. The core value that is at the heart of everything Julie does is equality. She believes that every Canadian should be valued and loved equally, and that every Canadian should have equal access to opportunity. Julie with PM Trudeau meeting with the community. During the 43rd Parliament, Julie was proud to have introduced the first Guaranteed Basic Income Bill in the House of Commons in Canada—Bill C-273: An Act to Establish a National Strategy for a Guaranteed Basic Income. She continues to work on finding a way to create a broad-scale, long-term pilot across multiple provinces as a way to prove the model. This important work is ongoing. During the 42nd Parliament, Julie introduced into the House of Commons a Private Members Bill M-126 proposing to celebrate nationally June as Portugal Heritage Month and June 10 to be formally known at the national level as Portugal Day in Canada. The Private Members Bill passed unanimously and June has been celebrated as Portugal Heritage Month since June 2018. Julie likes to get things done. For a list of her accomplishments as the Member of Parliament for Davenport kindly click here. Prior to becoming a Member of Parliament, Julie spent more than 20 years in increasingly senior-level positions in the private-sector (investment banking, banking and biotechnology). At BMO Bank of Montreal, she was instrumental in the creation and the launch of the email money transfer service in Canada. A novel concept that has transitioned into an everyday banking product. A long-time passionate climate activist she co-founded Project Neutral in 2010, an environmental organization dedicated to helping individuals and communities move to net-zero. Julie was also one of the founding board members of JUMP Math Tutoring. Julie received her MBA at the University of British Columbia (completing the degree at the London Business School) and her Bachelor of Commerce at McGill University (completing her degree at the Institute Commercial de Nancy). She speaks conversational French and Spanish, and is working on her Portuguese!

Filip Ejdus is an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Belgrade. Ejdus obtained his Ph.D. in International Relations and Security from the of Belgrade. As a recipient of the prestigious Marie Curie Award, he spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bristol. Ejdus is also the President of the Central and Eastern European International Studies Association (CEEISA), a member of the Board of Directors of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCBP), and co-chair of the Regional Study Group for Stability in Southeast Europe at the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes. In his academic research, Ejdus explores how identity, emotions, and memory influence international security. Geographically, his research interests focus on the Western Balkans, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East. In his studies of public policies, he has dealt with democratic governance, security sector reform, conventional arms control, and EU security policy. Ejdus has published numerous papers and books including International Security: Theories, Sectors, and Levels (Clio, 2024) and Crisis and Ontological Insecurity: Serbia’s Anxiety Over Kosovo’s Secession (Palgrave 2020), receiving the Veselin Lučić Award from the University of Belgrade. He is also the founder and co-editor of the Journal of Regional Security. 

Alexandra Gheciu is a Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Her publications include, in addition to articles in leading academic journals, several books: NATO in the ‘’New Europe’: The Politics of International Socialization After the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 2005); Securing Civilization? The EU, NATO and the OSCE in the Post-9/11 World (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Return of the Public in Global Governance (co-edited with Jacqueline Best, Cambridge University Press, 2014);  Security Entrepreneurs: Performing Protection in Post-Cold War Europe (Oxford University Press, 2018); and The Oxford Handbook of International Security (co-edited with William Wohlforth, Oxford University Press, 2018). She is a member of the team working on the Global Right project and is writing a new book on NATO in an illiberal world. Prior to joining the University of Ottawa, she was a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. She has also been a Senior Research Associate with the Changing Character of War Programme (Oxford University), a Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, Paris and at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and the 2022 MINDS Research Fellow at the NATO Defence College (Rome).

Aida A. Hozic is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Associate Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida. She has received multiple Fulbright Awards, John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in Global Security, Open Society Fellowship and many other grants and awards. Hozic has also served as a Book Review Editor of International Studies Review, Associate Editor of Journal of International Relations and Development, and a member of the Editorial Board and one of the editors of Review of International Political. Hozic’s research is situated at the intersection of feminist political economy, cultural studies, and international security. She is the author of Hollyworld: Space, Power and Fantasy in the American Economy (Cornell University Press, 2022) and co-editor of Scandalous Economics: Gender and Politics of Financial Crises (Oxford University Press, 2016). She has written dozens of peer-reviewed articles and chapters in edited volumes and a number of articles in journals and edited volumes. Her public writing has also appeared in Slate, Foreign Policy, Politico, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, and Guernica among many others.  

Anessa Kimball is a professor of Political Science at Laval University. Kimball is the Director of the Centre for International Security (CSI) at the École supérieure des études internationales (ETI), co-director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network (CDSN), and a member of the Defence & Security Foresight Group, North American team. Kimball received their Ph.D in Political Science from the State University of New York-Binghamton. Kimball is also among the rotating co-hosts of Battle Rhythm, the CDSN podcast and regularly contributes to Radio-Canada on US electoral politics and foreign policy, NATO as well as Canadian defense policy. Kimball’s research interests include the interdependence of domestic and foreign policy, defence and security, U.S. foreign policy and elections, international cooperation, and the economics of defense and military procurement. They have written a number of articles in journals and chapters in edited volumes, with their recent book Beyond 2% – NATO Partners, Institutions and Burden Management: Concepts, Risks and Models (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2023). 

Roman Krakovsky is an Associate Professor in History and Chair in Slovak History and Culture at the University of Ottawa. He graduated in International Relations from Inalco in Paris, and holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary History from the Sorbonne University. Previously, he held a research Fellowship at Cefres in Prague, at Open Society Archives in Budapest and at Polish History Museum in Warsaw. The leading theme of Krakovsky’s research is the analysis of the mechanisms of social cohesion in Central and Eastern Europe under communist rule. His PhD Thesis dedicated to these issues received The Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History of the Wiener Library (London), Prix d’histoire sociale of the Foundation Maison des sciences de l’homme (Paris) and Accessit Thesis Prize of the Varenne Foundation (Paris). He has written L’Europe centrale et orientale, de 1918 à la chute du mur de Berlin (Armand Colin, 2017), State and Society in Communist Czechoslovakia: Transforming the Everyday from WWII to the Fall of the Berlin Wall (I. B. Tauris, 2018), and more recently, Populism in Central and Eastern Europe (Berghan Books, 2025). 

Justin Massie is a Full Professor of political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Co-director of the Network for Strategic Analysis, and Co-director of Le Rubicon. He was the 2019 Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Canada-U.S. Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. His research focuses on the global power transition, multinational military coalitions, and Canadian foreign and defence policy. His work has been published in several journals, including International Studies Quarterly, International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, Contemporary Security Policy, Comparative Strategy, Canadian Journal of Political Science, International Journal (winner of the best article published in 2017), Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (winner of the best article published in 2008) and Études internationales (winner of the best article published in 2011). He is the author of Francosphère : l’importance de la France dans la culture stratégique du Canada (PUQ, 2013), and co-editor of Paradiplomatie identitaire : Nations minoritaires et politique extérieure (PUQ, 2019), America’s Allies and the Decline of U.S. Hegemony (Routledge, 2019), and Intelligence Cooperation in a Multipolar World: Non-American Perspectives (UTP, 2024).

Rebecca Moore has been a Professor of Political Science at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota since 1994 where she teaches courses in international politics, US foreign policy and international security. Prior to teaching at Concordia, Moore received her Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Moore’s principal research interest is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). She has published numerous articles and book chapters on the evolution of the Alliance since the late 1980s, with a particular focus on NATO enlargement and partnerships. Moore is the author of NATO’s New Mission: Projecting Stability in a Post-Cold War World (Praeger Security International, 2007) and co-editor of NATO in Search of a Vision (Georgetown University Press, 2010) and NATO’s Return to Europe: Engaging Ukraine, Russia, and Beyond (Georgetown University Press, 2017). Moore has published on both NATO issues and the topic of democracy/human rights promotion in peer-reviewed and policy journals.

Steve Saideman holds the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and is the Director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network, which has also led to his co-hosting Battle Rhythm, a CDSN podcast. At Carleton University, he teaches courses on contemporary international security, civil-military relations and United States foreign and defence policy. Prior to joining Carleton, he taught at the University of Vermont, Texas Tech University, and McGill University where he was the Canada Research Chair in International Security and Ethnic Conflict. Saideman specializes in issues related to political competition and international security, focusing largely on the international and domestic politics of ethnic conflicts, as well as civil-military relations in multilateral military operations. He has written a number of books: The Ties That Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and International Conflict (Columbia University Press , 2001); For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism and War (Columbia University Press, 2008); NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (Princeton University Press, 2014); and Adapting in the Dust: Lessons Learned from Canada’s War in Afghanistan (University of Toronto Press, 2016), as well as articles and chapters on nationalism, ethnic conflict, civil war, alliance dynamics, and civil-military relations.  

Barbora Tallová holds an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where she specialized in the impact of strategic culture on state behavior in the Ukraine War. Her research interests include security policy formation in East Europe and strategic culture theory. She works for the Government of Slovakia and will join the Public Diplomacy Division at NATO in 2025.

Jan Claudius Völkel is a DAAD Seconded professor at the University of Ottawa. He holds a Master’s degree in Political Science, Economics and Middle East Studies, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Freiburg. Völkel has held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Freiburg and Salzburg, the European University Institute in Florence, Cairo University and Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He was also a visiting researcher at Université de Montréal, Dundee University, Bahçesehir Üniversity and Southern Denmark University. Völkel’s research interests deal with the transformation processes in the Middle East and North Africa region as well as the Euro-Mediterranean relations, democratization, authoritarianism, and political institutions. He participated in various international research activities and won the prestigious Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship for a research project on “Parliaments in the Arab Transformation Processes”. He is the co-editor of Knowledge Production in Higher Education: Between Europe and the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2023) and The MENA Region and COVID-19: Impact, Implications and Prospects (Routledge, 2022), as well as publishing a number of articles in scholarly journals. 

Srdjan Vucetic is a Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. His research interests involve American and Canadian foreign and defence policy and international security. Prior to joining the GSPIA, Srdjan was the Randall Dillard Research Fellow in International Studies at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

William Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. He has been a member of the Government Department’s faculty since 2000, and teaches courses in international politics, Russian foreign policy, leadership and grand strategy, vas well as violence and security. At Dartmouth, he has served as chair of the Government Department, on the Committee Advisory to the President, the Committee on Instruction, and on many College level search committees. Wohlforth has held fellowships at the Institute of Strategic Studies at Yale, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, and the Hoover Institution. For six years he served as associate editor and then editor-in-chief of the journal Security Studies. Wohlforth’s research focus is international relations, with an emphasis on international security and foreign policy. He is the author or editor of nine books and some 60 articles such as The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions during the Cold War (Cornel University Press, 1993), World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy (Princeton University Press, 2008) and America Abroad: The United States Global Role in the 21st Century (Oxford University press, 2016).