Introduction
A persistent question in the last two decades of International Relations (IR) in Canada has asked to what extent there is a specifically “Canadian” IR. While some have argued that the postmodern streak in Canadian departments means that a national project would be impossible, even with the increased hiring of domestically educated professors (Nossal, Reference Nossal2000), others have argued that it is precisely this diversity and openness that is best able to describe what is common to IR as practised on Canadian soil (see, for example, de Larrinaga and Salter, Reference de Larrinaga and Salter2014; Lipson et al., Reference Lipson, Maliniak, Oakes, Peterson and Tierney2007). These interventions have been methodologically varied, including analyses of syllabi (Turenne Sjolander, Reference Turenne Sjolander2007), data from the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) survey (Saideman, Reference Saideman2016) and doctoral comprehensive examination reading lists (Murphy and Wigginton, Reference Murphy and Wigginton2020).
Wayne Cox and Kim Richard Nossal (Reference Cox, Richard Nossal and B2009) identify three important elements to the analysis of a distinct national flavour to the study of IR in a given country: the university setting, the professoriate and the institutions of IR research (289–90). The present research note seeks to revisit Cox and Nossal's analysis of the Canadian case, not only contributing an update to the data but also providing finer-grained detail. Our purpose is to move beyond simply differentiating Canadian IR from its American counterparts; by engaging with categories of analysis developed elsewhere in literature on Canadian IR, we develop a clearer understanding of the institutional arrangements of IR in Canada. For the institutional sample, we analyze the undergraduate, MA and PhD opportunities in IR at all 97 higher education institutions in Canada. We track the PhD training of the professoriate at institutions offering graduate studies in IR, following investigations that suggest isolating the three Americanized “BMT” schools (University of British Columbia [UBC], McGill University and University of Toronto [Saideman, Reference Saideman2016]) and the four most “critical” departments (the Four Nodes: McMaster University, University of Ottawa, University of Victoria and York University [de Larrinaga and Salter, Reference de Larrinaga and Salter2014]). In the literature on Canadian IR, the term Americanized typically refers to both a focus on the approaches dominant within the American academy (positivism, as well as the three paradigms of realism, liberalism and constructivism) and a tendency to hire scholars trained at institutions in the United States and, to a lesser extent, writing on US-centric topics, such as American foreign policy. In recognition of the unique realities faced by scholars and students of IR at French-language institutions (Cornut and Roussel, Reference Cornut and Roussel2011a, Reference Cornut and Roussel2011b; D'Aoust, Reference D'Aoust2012; Grondin, Reference Grondin2014; Grondin et al., Reference Grondin, D'Aoust and Racine-Sibulka2012; Murphy and Wigginton, Reference Murphy and Wigginton2020), we also introduce a measurement of French-language institutions, the FLI, consisting of the four largest French-language universities in our analysis—Université de Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Université Laval and Université de Sherbrooke.Footnote 1 As well, our conference tracking captures Canadian participation at a wider variety of institutions in order to determine patterns that might differentiate the various universities. While there is no perfect way for quantifying the discipline, analyzing data on the IR professoriate is standard practice in stocktaking exercises and provides analytically useful data in answering these questions. In short, while scholars at the BMT, Four Nodes and FLI schools have distinct characteristics compared to the rest of Canada, the Canadianness-as-openness hypothesis holds for all schools except for those in the BMT.
The remainder of the research note proceeds in four sections. The first offers a brief literature review on previous work on the Canadian question in IR. The second outlines our methodology, specifically the clearer inclusion criteria for determining the IR professoriate. The third section discusses our results across all three levels. The conclusion reflects on the validity of the BMT, Four Nodes and FLI groups, setting out future research questions in the disciplinary sociology of Canadian IR.
Background on the Canadian Question
Much like questions of Canadian uniqueness in general terms, the question of a uniquely Canadian IR is often framed in terms of Americanness. While in part this makes sense because of the historical identification of IR as an American social science—first by Grosser (Reference Grosser1956) and later by Hoffman (Reference Hoffmann1977)—it is also because T. H. B. Symons’ (Reference Symons1975) call to action was specifically to redirect attention away from American topics and Canada-US relations and toward issues of trade, diplomacy and other topics more relevant to Canada's place in the world. It was necessary, for Symons, that the Canadian academy devote significantly more resources to the teaching and researching of IR by Canadians and for Canadians.
This commission report led to an active movement in Canada to “Canadianize” the disciplinary footprint of IR within the domestic context. Twenty-five years later, Kim Richard Nossal (Reference Nossal2000) positively reviewed these efforts:
Foreign policy studies and courses in international relations flourish at universities across the country. Indeed, every Canadian university has courses on IR or Canada's place in the world; many have members of faculty whose primary responsibility is to teach and to conduct research on Canadian foreign policy; and not a few universities have specialized centres devoted to the study of Canada's international relations or defence or foreign policy. (96)
Nossal uses data collected regarding hiring based on country of doctoral study to demonstrate the marked increase in the hiring of Canadian-trained PhDs as well as a steady decrease in those being hired that are US-trained. While Nossal (Reference Nossal2000) ultimately believes that the prevalence of postmodern and constructivist approaches would not lead to the kind of nationalist project envisioned by Symons, one could imagine the development of a domestic IR context that could interact with the broader Americanized discipline—a bifurcation that Ole Waever (Reference Waever1998) observed internationally at the turn of the millennium.Footnote 2
Post-2000, interventions into the Canadian IR question have largely—but not entirely—followed Nossal's lead of focussing on the professoriate. The TRIP survey, which poses a questionnaire to an international sample of professors, has been one important avenue for studying the discipline through the professoriate. Lipson et al. (Reference Lipson, Maliniak, Oakes, Peterson and Tierney2007) make use of the TRIP survey to demonstrate the way this shift in hiring that occurred specifically in the final quarter of the twentieth century has materialized into a divide between Canadian and American IR that remains nonetheless commensurable. The authors argue that scholars from both countries largely agree on major foreign policy issues, which is unsurprising given that the two countries are close allies and profess to share the longest nonmilitarized border in the world. However, while the countries agree “on many issues in world politics, including the war in Iraq and the top seven or eight issues facing the two countries in the next decade,” they also diverge in important ways (Lipson et al., Reference Lipson, Maliniak, Oakes, Peterson and Tierney2007: 343). Findings from these scholars suggest that what separates Canadian IR from its US counterpart is theoretical, methodological and ideological pluralism. While American IR is often characterized as having more hegemonic approaches, these authors paint Canadian IR as a mosaic in comparison (Lipson et al., Reference Lipson, Maliniak, Oakes, Peterson and Tierney2007). Commenting on a later iteration of the TRIP survey, Stephen Saideman (Reference Saideman2016) highlights how American preferences are most clearly visible in three schools—UBC, McGill and Toronto—and structures his analysis around the categories of professors’ responses at these BMT schools versus the non-BMT schools.
Cox and Nossal's (Reference Cox, Richard Nossal and B2009) intervention into the Canadian IR question continues Nossal's earlier work of analyzing the professoriate through the intellectual formation of the scholars, with reference to other important features of the disciplinary footprint.Footnote 3 They outline some of the administrative similarities the two countries share with regard to IR departments but show that the most mentioned research interests in Canada are IR theory, political economy, Canadian foreign policy, globalization and global governance—and a “notable absence of interest (and expertise) in the Canadian academy in many of the methods of IR found in the American academy: rational choice, game theory, formal modelling, or quantitative methods” (Cox and Nossal, Reference Cox, Richard Nossal and B2009: 297). The authors suggest this is surprising, given that their data show that of the 225 IR scholars at Canadian institutions, almost 30 per cent received their PhDs from American universities. They highlight the BMT schools as distinct at their level of Americanization—in training, if not directly research interests—which is similar to Saideman's conclusion drawn years later from a survey rather than an analysis of academic profiles.
Similar and important debates have been ongoing in the related area of Canadian Foreign Policy (CFP). Several scholars who write about the state of CFP suggest that at one time it was a growing field experiencing progress and marked by expressions of satisfaction from academics regarding their research and teaching activities (Gecelovsky and Kukucha, Reference Gecelovsky and Kukucha2008). Brian Bow (Reference Bow2010), however, laments the weakness of CFP and suggests “we need to have a conventional social science approach to the study of Canadian foreign policy and we need it to be robust and self-confident, for the sake of the field as a whole” (376–77). This and other critiques by Boucher (Reference Boucher2014) and Black and Smith (Reference Black and Smith2014) seem to echo the call to action by Symons; however, rather than seeking to find Canadianness, these scholars are seeking to find academic rigour that they see as slowly withdrawing from the field of CFP. Unlike much of the literature on Canadian IR, which seems to celebrate pluralism and openness to critical approaches, much of the debate around the sociology of CFP seems to bemoan what is seen as a similar shift. Many write of the same commitment to positivist approaches that performed “real science” in the same way they discuss Canada's waning place on the world stage (Bow and Lennox, Reference Bow and Lennox2008; Bow, Reference Bow2010, Reference Bow2014; Boucher, Reference Boucher2014). Despite these ongoing concerns, Black and Smith (Reference Black and Smith2014) conclude that “boundary markers that define a field are regularly disrupted by the practices of critical, feminist, and mainstream scholars alike. The result is indeed ‘messy.’ Yet in the messiness we find hopeful sources of renewal and possibility” (151).
Focussing not on Americanized IR in Canada but on the burgeoning field of critical security studies, Miguel de Larrinaga and Mark Salter (Reference de Larrinaga and Salter2014) identify Four Nodes of critically oriented scholarship at Canadian institutions—McMaster, Ottawa, Victoria and York. While critical IR is by no means a uniquely Canadian enterprise, their special issue drew attention to the development of critical-research networks in the Canadian context (focussing specifically on critical approaches to security studies). Called the antithesis of American social science by Saideman (Reference Saideman2016: 195), critical security studies research eschews realist, liberal and constructivist forms of positivism in favour of more postpositivist and interpretivist methodologies. While the Four Nodes are not presented as strictly separate entities in the same way as the BMT schools are, their existence as a kind of critical counterweight to those Americanized institutions provides an interesting mental map of the discipline as found at Canadian institutions. Pluralism abounds, both within the Canadian IR professoriate as a whole and within departments (Cox, Reference Cox2014), and there is no guarantee that a Four Nodes PhD will not pursue realist problem-solving work employing positivist methodologies or that a BMT PhD will eschew critical methods.Footnote 4
Two Canadian Questions? Bilingualism and IR in Canada
A second important aspect of understanding IR in Canada is the unequal status of French-language and English-language research. Anglonormativity leads to situations where students enrolled in French-language programs are frequently assigned English texts but not vice versa (Turenne Sjolander, Reference Turenne Sjolander2007). Francophone scholars are often faced with the difficult reality that they are less likely to be read and cited if they choose to publish in French (Grondin, Reference Grondin2014). The latter point is particularly troublesome, as Anne-Marie D'Aoust (Reference D'Aoust2012) argues, because it leaves scholars with the unfortunate choice between contributing to marginalization of their own mother tongue or taking on significant professional risks. Despite calls to support French-language scholarship in Canada, research shows that this simply is not being accomplished (Cornut and Roussel, Reference Cornut and Roussel2011a, Reference Cornut and Roussel2011b; Murphy and Wigginton, Reference Murphy and Wigginton2020).Footnote 5 These uncomfortable realities raise questions about whether Canadian IR's pluralism adequately reflects its equally pluralistic scholars or if this acceptance pertains only to research interests and professional formation. While the impacts of this structural inequality in Canadian IR raise important questions for future research, it is beyond the scope of this research note to deduce and apply new categories.
Methodology
As this research note is intended to revisit as well as update and deepen the discussion on Canadian IR as outlined by Cox and Nossal (Reference Cox, Richard Nossal and B2009), we base our general approach to obtaining our sample on their work, though with some important changes. The first topic analyzed by Cox and Nossal is the university setting—where IR is taught. To catalogue, we analyzed all undergraduate, MA and PhD opportunities at all 97 postsecondary institutions recognized by Universities Canada. From here we determined the percentage of institutions offering IR-focussed programming at the three cycles of education. While cognate disciplines often offer topically related courses and programs, we focus only on programs self-identifying as offering an IR stream, because the (re)presentation of IR's fuzzy boundaries is mediated through the formal structure of programs and courses.Footnote 6 We exclude from our sample related issue areas that claim distinct identities other than IR, such as international development, global development, international studies, area studies and global studies.
For the analysis of the professoriate—the second object of analysis identified by Cox and Nossal—we began with a sample of the 30 institutions that offer graduate-level instruction in IR. We make use of university department websites and follow the practice of limiting our sample to tenured or tenure-track professors, who are more likely to have profiles on the departmental websites and to have a significant influence on the way that the field is instructed at their institution. While some previous survey-based studies have allowed participants to self-select in and others have proceeded on personal judgment of the researchers, we developed inclusion criteria that the departmental profile would have to list IR courses in a “courses taught” section or—more commonly—to reference IR, IR theory, international security, international political economy or global governance in their research interests. While this methodology does present some limits due to out-of-date or incomplete online profiles, and may reify traditional themes, it has the benefit of limiting the impact of researcher biases in the data collection process and is roughly in line with TRIP survey inclusion criteria (Maliniak et al., Reference Maliniak, Oakes, Peterson and Tierney2011). For each of the 242 scholars identified as meeting these criteria, we recorded the country of doctoral training, as well as the specific Canadian institution if applicable. For 241 of the 242 professors in the sample, we were able to identify the PhD-granting institution. The role of the professor was recorded as assistant/lecturer, associate or full/named.
Because there has not been a great deal of change in the journal ecosystem in Canadian IR from Cox and Nossal's (Reference Cox, Richard Nossal and B2009) review, our investigation into institutions of IR research focussed on the conference participation from each institution. Because the COVID-19 pandemic presented a serious challenge to the 2020 conference season, we assembled a database of 2019 conference programs from the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA), as well as regional Canadian conferences, the American Political Science Association (APSA), the two conferences of the European International Studies Association (EISA), the Millennium conference held annually at the London School of Economics, and all conferences related to the International Studies Association (ISA). For each ISA/EISA/Millennium program, we recorded the total number of participants from each school identified for the professoriate sample. For political science conferences, we recorded the total number of participants from identified institutions only in IR-related roundtables, panels or keynotes. Canadian institutions were represented at all 21 conference programs, and 19 of those included representation from universities offering graduate programs. While any given year will have different levels of participation at one conference or another due to conference location or theme, a snapshot of all conference activity provides a sufficient basis for this research note.
Results and Discussion
Following the three analytical frames set out above, we survey the state of the art of IR in Canada. The university setting outlines the variety of institutions where IR courses and programs are offered. The professoriate section discusses country of PhD training for current professors meeting inclusion criteria across the three categories. We then look more closely at the professors who earned their PhDs in Canada and compare the placement history of different schools in aggregate terms, as well as broken down into BMT, Four Nodes, FLIs and Rest of Canada.
University setting
An inquiry into the university setting of IR (in its broadest sense) in Canada reveals that the discipline is offered at the vast majority of universities. In total, 79 per cent of institutions (77 out of 97) offer IR-focussed programming for undergraduates, with the outliers being specialist institutions focussed on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) or fine arts. The IR-focussed courses are often taught within politics departments (whether styled “political science” or “political studies”), and faculties with courses in similar issue areas but a different disciplinary identification—for example, global development—tend to avoid the specific identifier of “International Relations” in course descriptions. At the graduate level, 31 per cent (30 out of 97) offer MA-level instruction in International Relations,Footnote 7 and 21 per cent (20 out of 97) offer PhD-level instruction.Footnote 8 Related graduate programs in international affairs are available at Carleton University, the University of Ottawa and the University of Toronto, and programs in global governance are available at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.
Because graduate programs—rather than undergraduate survey courses—shape the scholarly trajectory of the proverbial “next generation” of Canadian-trained IR scholars through comprehensive examinations, course sequences and departmental emphases, standard practice in the disciplinary sociology of Canadian IR has been to focus on the graduate-degree-granting programs. Within that group of schools, there are two subgroups that have been identified in the literature as having distinct subprofiles. The so-called BMT schools—UBC, McGill and Toronto—are traditionally recognized as the most Americanized graduate programs, tending to hire US-trained scholars and following fashions of the American academy more closely than the rest of Canada (see, for example, Saideman Reference Saideman2016). On the other side, the Four Nodes of critical security studies—McMaster, Ottawa, Victoria and York—represent a kind of counterweight to the American influence, drawing more heavily on European and interdisciplinary sources (de Larrinaga and Salter, Reference de Larrinaga and Salter2014). Cox (Reference Cox2014) is correct to note that these groupings are far from absolute descriptions: critical work occurs in BMT schools, just as more American-style work can be found in Four Nodes institutions, while other universities—such as Queen's University or Carleton University—are home to a mixture of approaches. While it would be beyond the scope of this research note, a deep dive into the institutions that are most mixed in their approaches—hiring scholars from a variety of institutions and engaging in different forms of research—could provide substantial insights into the large residual category that fits into neither the BMT nor Four Nodes categories. In recognition of the unique experiences of French-language scholars and students in IR in Canada, we have taken a preliminary step to reduce the residual category by introducing the FLI category, consisting of Université de Montréal, UQAM, Université Laval and Université de Sherbrooke.Footnote 9 We employ these categories to frame the university setting of IR in Canada as a starting point for the discussions that follow.
The Professoriate
Overall, slightly under half of the IR professoriate in Canada received their doctorates in the country, representing a 6 per cent decrease from the results in the original work by Cox and Nossal (Reference Cox, Richard Nossal and B2009: 298).Footnote 10 Over one-third attended a PhD program in the United States, and 13 per cent in the UK; full details are found in Table 1.
Table 1 IR Professoriate by Country of PhD
With the significant outlier of the BMT schools, around half of IR professors received their PhD from a Canadian institution. There is also a consistent presence of UK-educated individuals, except at French-language institutions. In line with the findings of Cox and Nossal (Reference Cox, Richard Nossal and B2009), the highest concentration of professors who received their training at an American university is found at the BMT schools, along with a small number of UK PhDs. French-language institutions are notable for a lower representation of US and UK PhDs, as well as a higher number of graduates from other international countries—including a number from France.
Taking a closer look at Canadian PhD hiring, even when BMT schools do hire a Canadian-trained professor, they hire exclusively from their own category. Table 2 reveals that the Four Nodes schools hire each other's graduates more often than BMT or other Canadian PhDs (though they do not represent a majority). French-language institutions hire within the FLI category 57 per cent of the time, and scholars from all institutional categories are hired by the residual grouping.
Table 2 Canadian PhD Hiring Patterns by Group
In their analysis of critical security studies in Canada, de Larrinaga and Salter (Reference de Larrinaga and Salter2014) suggest that the practice of BMT schools hiring mostly US-trained PhDs may be a strategic move to position themselves as the best in the nation. Following the assumption that the American approach is more prestigious, then the best schools in a country other than the United States would be the most “Americanized” schools. Because of the consensus around the three BMT schools being the most Americanized, cross-hiring between BMT schools should not surprise us, following a logic that assumes Americanized programs are more prestigious. But does that play out across the country writ large? Table 3 reveals the top 10 most frequent Canadian PhD-granting institutions within the IR professoriate.
Table 3 PhD Placements by Canadian School and Rank Category
The University of Toronto and York University occupy the top two spots, with all BMT schools, three of the Four Nodes and two French-language institutions ranking in the top 11. Among noncategorized schools, Carleton University, Queen's University and Dalhousie University all boast respectable placement records. While the BMT schools and the Four Nodes may represent key hubs for research networks in Canadian IR and while the FLIs represent a stronghold for French-language scholarship, institutions that do not clearly fall into these categories play an important role in educating the future Canadian professoriate. While many institutions have a relatively balanced placement record across career stages, heavy weighting toward senior professorial ranks and limited success in recent years may indicate a decline in placement success rates.Footnote 11 Our results indicate a slight de-Canadianization in the decade since Cox and Nossal's analysis of Canadian IR and a pronounced self-isolation by BMT schools from the rest of the Canadian IR community.
The institutions of IR
In their third analytical category, Cox and Nossal discuss the institutions of IR. The journal ecosystem in Canada has not changed significantly, with the main outlets remaining International Journal, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal and Études internationales for IR-specific content and Studies in Political Economy for Marxist or socialist-oriented scholarship; the generalist political science journals Politique et Sociétés and the Canadian Journal of Political Science remain open in principle but publish little IR scholarship. Beyond their list, the Canadian Political Science Review similarly remains open in principle to IR work but without a significant volume of articles appearing there. Two graduate journals focussed on IR issues are published annually: the bilingual Potentia through the University of Ottawa's Centre for International Policy Studies and the Paterson Review of International Affairs through its namesake department at Carleton University.
The second subcategory of interest when analyzing the domestic institutions of IR in Canada is the academic conference cycle. Drawing on TRIP survey data, Saideman (Reference Saideman2016) notes a difference in the reported importance of the CPSA, ISA and APSA between BMT and non-BMT schools. Because conference programs are now easily accessible online, we examined the full 2019 conference circuit—not only the main CPSA, ISA and APSA conferences but also regional meetings of the Atlantic provinces, Prairie provinces, the Société québécoise de science politique (SQSP), all affiliated conferences of the ISA, and the major conferences held by the British International Studies Association (BISA), EISA and Millennium. Canadian-institution-affiliated scholars presented at all 21 of these conferences; however, two were only attended by scholars affiliated to undergraduate-only schools. Table 4 ranks all conferences by 2019 participants.
Table 4 Conference Attendance by Category
Note: ISA is the International Studies Association, with regional conferences denoted by region (NE = Northeast, South, AP = Asia-Pacific, Midwest, West), location (Accra = conference held in Accra, Ghana,), or partner organization (CEEISA = Central and Eastern European International Studies Association, ISSS = International Security Studies Section, PEACE = Peace Studies, KAIS = Korean Association of International Studies). APSA = American Political Science Association. APPSA = Atlantic Provinces Political Science Association. BCPSA = British Columbia Political Science Association. BISA = British International Studies Association. CPSA = Canadian Political Science Association. EISA = European International Studies Association. EWIS = European Workshop in International Studies. PrPSA = Prairie Political Science Association. SQSP = Société québécoise de science politique.
To be clear, our analysis here is focussed solely on the participation of Canadian IR scholars at academic conferences in order to determine patterns domestically between various universities and is not used in comparison to American scholars or those of other countries. While all three categories agree on the importance of the ISA conference, it is not a clear picture beyond there. The top five conferences for BMT scholars are all major conventions: ISA, APSA, CPSA, BISA and EISA. The Four Nodes schools feature a regional meeting in a prominent place, with ISA's northeast regional meetingFootnote 12 (along with BISA) attracting more presenters than the APSA. After ISA, the French-language institutions group sees the CPSA, APSA and SQSP conference, before European regional conferences. The Prairie Political Science Association (PrPSA) ranks after ISA, CPSA and APSA for the Rest of Canada schools, followed by ISA's 2019 conference in Accra, Ghana. While the preference of BMT scholars for major conventions over regional meetings may be the only clear result, behaviour indicates a shared understanding of ISA as the pre-eminent conference for Canadian IR across all three groupings.
Conclusion and Future Research
Given our analysis, prior disciplinary-sociological investigations into Canadian IR have been correct to categorize the BMT schools as separate from the rest of Canada. The hiring pattern is significantly different, and the lack of hiring from non-BMT Canadian departments suggests that this pattern may be unlikely to change. While TRIP survey data indicate that the BMT schools are the most respected in the country in terms of reputation, job placement data indicate that this is not a settled question (at least within Canada). Further analysis of the rankings should examine placement records outside of Canada, completion rates and time-to-completion.
The group of schools represented here as the Four Nodes is what we might call a fuzzy fit: while the patterns observed differ from the BMT schools, the lines were not as clear as observed with BMT. Greater connection between Four Nodes and uncategorized schools and the willingness to hire BMT PhDs would suggest that the characteristic openness to critical approaches that has been previously applied to Canadian IR may exist at Four Nodes, French-language institutions and uncategorized schools more so than at the BMT schools. Further analysis on the topic of openness could benefit from an analysis of scholarly output from these departments, cataloguing journal placement, methodologies and issue areas. As well, networks of citation and inter-institutional co-authorship may provide insights into collaborations and connections that weaken or strengthen the categories of BMT and Four Nodes.
While our analysis of the four largest French-language institutions offers some interesting insights into their hiring and placement records, further inquiry is needed here, as well, to understand how French-language institutions fit into the picture of Canadian IR. As D'Aoust (Reference D'Aoust2012) mentions, this cannot be a matter of assuming irrelevance or complete difference or of equating Quebec with all French-language scholarship. Bilingual and French-language institutions place PhDs at English-language universities, and scholars whose first language is French frequently attend English-language programs. Inter-university collaborations, such as the RAS-NSA network hosted jointly by Queen's University and UQAM, offer promising signs that the “two solitudes” may be connecting. Tracing PhD placements—and revealing the status of the Université de Montréal—is a first step in recognizing the complex linguistic dynamics of IR in Canada, but much more remains to be studied. This is further true of the large residual category, which includes a number of institutions where scholars trained at different institutions and engaging in a variety of research traditions share space in departments of various sizes. By revisiting, updating and extending the analysis of Cox and Nossal, we hope that this research note can help draw out new questions for analyzing the state of IR in Canada.
