Boris C. DeWiel, Chair Associate Professor Office:  Admin. 3076 Tel:    (250) 960-5662 E-mail: dewielb@unbc.ca BA (Athabasca), MEDes (Calgary), PhD (Calgary) This focus of my research is a central political question: Why is it in politics that good, honest, intelligent people disagree so often and so deeply?    With me. But also with each other. I'm trying to identify the core values that tend to cluster together, for example along the left-right political continuum. I do so by tracing the history of political ideas to see how certain kinds of beliefs have tended over time to be associated with each other. I also do some empirical work with surveys to see whether my theories have anything to do with reality. If not, I blame reality. My belief is that politics at bottom is about disagreement. (If you think I'm wrong, it shows I'm right.) In the classroom, I try to create a climate of friendly, respectful contestation. We won't find all the answers, but that's OK. Intelligence is the ability to operate at a higher level of confusion. We'll ask bigger questions in search of better befuddlement. My ongoing research projects include: an interpretation of left-right value space using two formal cleavage dimensions: individualism vs. communitarianism and endogenously created values vs. exogenously given values the creation of a survey instrument to test this theory of right-left differences the application of this theory of value differences to explain the effects of Sept. 11 on the ideological orientation of citizens in Canada and the U.S. an analysis of attitudes in the 2000 Canadian Election Study, using respondents' latitude ("northernness") and longitude ("westernness") to determine whether values tend to change as one moves north and west of Toronto an attempt to explain the Kantian idea of freedom by tracing his idea of the noumenal to the Neoplatonic idea of the One.

 

 

Associate Professor

Tel: (250) 960-6636
Email: young@unbc.ca
BA (hon) Alberta, MA Carleton, PhD Toronto

 

 

John Young teaches comparative politics and has written numerous articles and chapters on Russian politics. He has worked or studied in Canada, the United States, Germany, Russia and Japan. He has recently returned from an extended leave (2001-2004), spending the previous three years residing in Moscow. He is currently examining the pursuit of a new public philosophy in post Soviet Russia. 

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Alex Michalos
Professor Emeritus
Tel:    (250) 960-6697
E-mail: michalos@unbc.ca / michalos.pdf

Alex is Chancellor of the University of Northern British Columbia, Emeritus Professor in Political Science and Director of the Institute for Social Research at UNBC. He has published 23 books and over 95 refereed articles, and founded or co-founded 6 scholarly journals. He is the President of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s Sectoral Commission on Natural, Social and Human Sciences, and a past President of Academy II (Humanities and Social Sciences) of the Royal Society of Canada, and of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies. He has won several awards of distinction, including the:

• Gold Medal for Achievement in Research (2004) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (the Council’s highest honour);
• Award for the Betterment of the Human Condition (2003) from the International Society for Quality of Life Studies;
• Vincentian Ethics Scholar Award (2002) by the Vincentian Universities of the USA;
• Award for Extraordinary Contributions to Quality of Life Research (1996) from the International Society for Quality of Life Studies;
  
• Secretary of State’s Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Research in Canadian Studies (1984);
• British Columbia Political Science Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2005);
• Honorary Doctor of Letters from Thompson Rivers University, B.C. (2005); and
  
• Deryck Thompson Award for Community Social Planning (2006) from the Social Planning and Research Council of B.C.

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Tracy Summerville
Assistant Professor
Office:  3067

Tel:    (250) 960-6637
E-mail: summervi@unbc.ca
Web: http://web.unbc.ca/~summervi.html

 

My current research interests focus on issues of identity, community and citizenship. I am working on a paper that examines the relationship between civic engagement and the commodification of the family in corporate advertising. I am also currently working collaboratively on a number of projects including: a project concerned with the Historical Geography of the Upper Fraser, issues of provincial regionalism and particularly public policy outcomes that significantly affect the provincial norths, and issues arising from competing constructions of the north that occur in different subdivisions of what is traditionally understood to be political science.

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Jason Morris
Instructor

Office:  Admin. 3063

 

Phone: 960-5931

E-mail: jasonm@unbc.ca

I have significant experience in the so-called "real world" of politics and government, having worked, federally and provincially, in Ottawa and Victoria and elsewhere, for different parties and elected representatives at the government, opposition and independent levels. Positions have included Legislative Assistant, Research Assistant, Constituency Assistant Special Assistant and Question Period Coordinator. Public policy work in these ranks has ranged from banks and financial institutions, impaired driving, crown corporations, Quebec secession, to "stay-at-home" parents and RRSPs.

In addition to the paid work, in politics I have participated on numerous election campaign teams in just about every capacity there is. These capacities include co-campaign manager, polling captain, scheduling manager, fundraising, membership management and public relations.

I have worked as a freelance journalist, political and community speechwriter and am a consultant. Recent consulting work has focused on expanding natural resource exports to emerging markets such as China and developing prefabricated housing kits for delivery to the tsunami-affected area of Indonesia.

As a political scientist, I study political parties, BC government and politics, electoral finance and constituency associations.

I moved from Vancouver to Prince George in 1995, but have been to Ottawa for a time since then. I have been married since 1996 and have three children, aged 7, 4 and 2. I enjoy spending time with my family, watching old movies and playing soccer.

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Gary N. Wilson
Associate Professor, on sabbatical
Office:  Admin. 3070
Tel:   (250) 960-5514
E-mail: wilsong@unbc.ca
MA (Toronto), PhD (Toronto)

 

Russian Politics; Comparative Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations

My research examines the issue of multi-level governance and intergovernmental relations in the Russian Federation. I am presently working with a team of academics, government officials and other researchers on a project in the Siberian Federal District (SFD), one of seven newly districts in the Russian Federation. The goal of this project is to assist local, regional and federal government officials in the SFD with the task of building an effective system of multi-level governance and policy coordination. I am also interested in oil politics and the problems of developing resource management regimes in Russia and the states of the Former Soviet Union.

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From 1999-2001, Michael was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Auckland, and from 2001-2004 was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations at Queen’s University. He has lectured at McGill, Auckland, Queen’s and the University of Otago. He joined UNBC in the winter of 2006 as a Canada Research Chair in Comparative Indigenous State Relations. Research interests: citizenship and self-determination, the politics of difference, indigenous rights and governance, nationalism and democratization, and legal norms and constitutionalism. His recent publications have appeared in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, the Australian Journal of Political Science, Ethnicities, and Citizenship Studies. He is co-author (with Helena Catt) of Sub-State Nationalism: A Comparative Analysis of Institutional Design (Routledge 2002), and (with Siobhan Harty) of  In Defense of Multinational Citizenship (UWP, Political Philosophy Now series, UBC Press, 2005). In 2004, Michael was awarded a 3 year Standard Research Grant by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a project on Democracy and Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

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Jason Lacharite
Assistant Professor

Phone: (250) 960-5597

Office:  Admin. 3013

Email: lachari@unbc.ca

 

B.A. (Honours), Political Science and Sociology, University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C. (1996)

 

Research:

•  Globalization and taxation;
•  Canadian and Australian Public Policy;
•  International Security;
•  Chinese Politics;
•  China and the Internet.

  Teaching:

• POLS 603 (Fall)
• INTS 498 (Fall)
• INTS 205 (Fall and Winter)
• POLS 320 (Winter)
• POLS 334 (Winter)

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