David B. MacDonald

About

David B MacDonald is a mixed-race political science professor from Treaty 4 lands in Regina, Saskatchewan, with Trinidad Indian and Scottish ancestry. He is a full professor and in 2017 was appointed as the Research Leadership Chair for the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences. He is also the North American series editor for Global Political Sociology at Palgrave Macmillan.

He has held faculty positions at the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris - ESCP Business School (Paris, France). He has a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

His work focuses on Comparative Indigenous Politics in Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States. He has also worked extensively in the areas of International Relations, American foreign policy, Holocaust and genocide studies, and critical race theory. He is the principal investigator (with co-researcher Sheryl Lightfoot) on multi-year Insight Grant through the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada entitled “Complex Sovereignties: Theory and Practice of Indigenous-Self Determination in Settler States and the International System” (2018-2023).

He has recently completed another IG entitled Principal Investigator “Bi-Nationalism as a form of Aboriginal-Settler Reconciliation in a Multicultural Context: What Can Canada Learn from New Zealand's Model of Power-Sharing?” SSHRCC Insight Grant 2013-17; and “Indigenous People and the UN Genocide Convention: A Study of Indigenous Assimilation Policies in Canada” (SSHRCC Standard Research Grant 2009-13.

He is also active on two other SSHRC grants:

• "Transformative Memory: Strengthening an International Network" Co-Applicant on a Partnership Development Grant.
• “Embodying Empathy: Fostering Historical Knowledge and Caring Through a Virtual Indian Residential School” Co-Applicant on a Partnership Development Grant.

He has published 4 sole authored books, as well as numerous edited books, journal special issues, and two co-authored textbooks. He has published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Journal of Genocide Research, Third World Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Sociology, Journal of Human Rights, International Relations, and others. His recent books include:

• Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases, First Canadian Edition co-authored with T. Dickovick and J. Eastwood (Oxford University Press Canada, in press, 2020).
• The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation (University of Toronto Press, 2019).
• Populism and World Politics: Exploring Inter- and Transnational Dimensions, co-edited with F.A. Stengel and D. Nabers (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019).
• Introduction to Politics, Second Canadian Edition co-authored with R. Garner, P. Ferdinand and S. Lawson (Oxford University Press Canada, 2016).

He has also been widely published in the Globe and Mail, National Post, Winnipeg Free Press, The Conversation, and other media outlets.

Select Publications

Refereed Books Authored and Co-Authored

• Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases, First Canadian Edition co-authored with T. Dickovick and J. Eastwood (Oxford University Press Canada, in press, 2020).
• The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation (University of Toronto Press, 2019).
• Introduction to Politics, Second Canadian Edition co-authored with R. Garner, P. Ferdinand and S. Lawson (Oxford University Press Canada, 2016).
• Introduction to Politics, First Canadian Edition co-authored with R. Garner, P. Ferdinand and S. Lawson (Oxford University Press Canada, 2012).
• Thinking History, Fighting Evil: Neoconservatives and the Perils of Historical Analogy in American Politics (Lexington / Rowman & Littlefield; 2009).
• Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation (Routledge, 2008).
• Balkan holocausts? Serbian and Croatian Victim Centred Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia (Manchester University Press, 2002).

Refereed Books Co-Edited

• Populism and World Politics: Exploring Inter- and Transnational Dimensions, with F.A. Stengel and D. Nabers (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019).
• Europe in its Own Eyes, Europe in the Eyes of the Other, co-edited with Mary DeCoste (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014) 322 pp.
• The Bush Leadership, the Power of Ideas and the War on Terror, co-edited with Dirk Nabers and Robert G. Patman (Ashgate Press, 2012) 220 pp.
• The Ethics of Foreign Policy, co-edited with R.G. Patman and B. Mason-Parker (Ashgate Press, 2007) 249 pp.

Peer Reviewed Journal Guest Edited

• (Co-edited with Tricia E. Logan) 1 Special Issue, 1 Symposium of Genocide Studies and Prevention (University of Toronto Press) on Indigenous Genocide – the journal is rigorously peer reviewed and is the official journal of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
• Special Issue title: “Time, Movement, and Space: Genocide Studies and Indigenous Peoples” Volume 9, Issue 2 (2015).
• Special Symposium (4 articles) title: “Genocide Studies, Colonization, and Indigenous Peoples” Volume 10, Issue 1 (2016).

Selected Articles and Chapters

• “Health in the Aftermath of Genocide: Healing and Reconciliation after the Indian Residential Schools Experience in Canada,” in Innes, Van Styvendale, and Henry (eds.) Global Indigenous Health (University of Arizona Press, 2018), pp 27-45.
• “Treaty Relations between Indigenous Peoples: Advancing Global Understandings of Self-Determination,” (co-authored with Sheryl Lightfoot) in New Diversities vol. 19, No. 2 (2017) pp 25-39.
• “Aotearoa Nw Zealand's Biculturalism: Lessons for Indigenous-Settler Relations in Canada,” In Patman and Iati (Eds.),New Zealand and the World (Singapore: World Scientific, 2018) pp. 67-82.
• “Coming to terms with the Canadian past: Truth and reconciliation, Indigenous genocide, and the post-war German model,” in Mischa Gabowitsch (Ed.), Replicating Atonement. Foreign Models in the Commemoration of Atrocities (Palgrave, 2017) pp. 163-87.
• “Forgetting to Celebrate: Genocide and Social Amnesia,” in Kiera Ladner and Myra Tait (eds) Surviving Canada: Indigenous Peoples Celebrate 150 Years of Betrayal (Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2017) pp. 159-80.
• “Do We Need Kiwi Lessons in Biculturalism? Considering the Usefulness of Aotearoa/New Zealand's Pākehā Identity in Re-Articulating Indigenous Settler Relations in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, Volume 49, Issue 4 (2016) pp. 643-664
  • Shortlisted for the 2017 John McMenemy Prize of the Canadian Political Science Association
• “Canada’s history wars: Indigenous genocide and public memory in the United States, Australia, and Canada” in Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 17, No 4 (2015) pp. 411-431.
• “Reforming Multiculturalism in a Bi-National Society: Aboriginal Peoples and the Search for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol 39, No 1 (2014), pp. 65-86.
• “Australia and New Zealand: Special Relationships in the Anglo-American World”, with Brendon O’Connor in Peter J Katzenstein (ed.) Anglo-America and its Discontents: Civilizational Identities beyond West and East (New York: Routledge, 2012) pp. 176-204
• “The Genocide Question and Indian Residential Schools in Canada”, co-authored with Graham Hudson, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol 45, No 2 (June 2012) 427–449.
  • Shortlisted for the 2013 John McMenemy Prize of the CPSA