Colin Farrelly Curriculum Vitae

Colin is a political theorist and philosopher. 

Research Interests

The foundational aspiration of Colin’s research is the advancement of the Enlightenment Project into the 21st century.  The themes of reason, science, progress, and optimism inform his curiosity-driven research interests and interdisciplinary focus.

Main research interests are: Ethics and political theory/philosophy, including distributive justice; ideal/non-ideal theory; history of political thought, deliberative democracy; all things virtue-related: virtue ethics, virtue epistemology, and virtue jurisprudence; Analytical Marxism; play; science and justice - especially the biomedical sciences (e.g. genetics, evolutionary biology, “geroscience” and the ethics of human enhancement).

Colin Farrelly is interested in supervising students interested in research projects at the intersection of political theory and advances in the biomedical sciences and/or public health ethics and policy. 

Brief Biography

Colin received his Ph.D. from the University of Bristol in England in 1999.  Over his 20-year academic career, he has held academic appointments in 10 different departments in Political Science, Philosophy, and Public Policy in England, Scotland, the United States, and Canada. Previous appointments include Visiting Professor in UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at the University of Manoa in Hawaii, Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University, Visitor in Oxford’s Program on Ethics and the New Biosciences, as well as permanent academic appointments at Waterloo University, Manchester University and the University of Birmingham.  For the past 5 years, Colin has been involved in teaching philosophy to male inmates. 

The author and editor of 6 books and approximately 50 journal articles, Colin’s publications include articles in journals in political science, philosophy, feminism, law, science, and medicine. He has published on a diverse array of topics, including the health challenges posed by population aging, the creation and evolution of patriarchy, virtue ethics, virtue epistemology, virtue jurisprudence, play and politics, freedom of expression, judicial review, non-ideal theory, gene patents, deliberative democracy, nanotechnology, sex selection, toleration, a citizen’s basic income, enhancing soldiers and economic incentives.  

Colin is currently working on the following three major research projects: 

1. a new textbook titled Classics in Political Philosophy for Today (under contract with Hackett Publishing) which covers a range of political thinkers from Plato through to MLK, Jr. The book encourages students to engage with, and critically reflect upon, the contemporary significance of the history of Western political thought.     
2. research for a new manuscript on the social significance of “geroscience”- the science of healthy aging.  This multi-year project examines the limitations of public health’s “War Against Disease”- covering not only the war against infectious diseases (such as COVID-19), but also the wars against cancer and obesity.  It also canvasses the progression of a century of experimental scientific research on modulating aging, from dietary restriction and genetic manipulation in laboratory organisms, to pharmacological interventions in humans.  
3. developing an account of a “realistic utopia” that focuses on the developmental potential of play- physical, social, and imaginative play.  This project relies on insights from evolutionary biology and positive psychology, as well as philosophy and the history of political thought.  

Teaching

For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages. 

Service (2024/2025)

• The Sir Edward Peacock Professor of Political Theory
• Appointments Committee 
• Departmental Committee
• Field Convenor (Theory)
• Renewal, Tenure and Promotion (RTP) Committee

Research Interests

American institutions and separation of powers, public law, judicial politics, legal mobilization, constitutional law (including civil rights and liberties), race and law, and legal institutions

I would be interested in supervising graduate students in the area of law and courts, especially judicial behavior and legal mobilization in the U.S. and Canadian contexts. I may also supervise students working on American institutions, broadly construed.

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. I was formerly a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace at the Queen's University Faculty of Law and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

My research and teaching interests are broadly in American law and politics. My work sits at the intersection of a number of sub-disciplines of political science, including American institutions, judicial politics, American political development, law and society, and political behavior. My primary research agenda aims to understand the effectiveness of “private enforcement statutes,” federal laws in which the primary mechanism of enforcement is private litigation, rather than direct bureaucratic action. I argue that a number of actors—presidents, bureaucratic agencies, judges, and interest groups—all have a hand in determining whether individuals will make use of private rights of action by filing lawsuits.

In other research, I examine how the public and governmental actors respond to Supreme Court decisions, as well as public preferences about judicial institutions and legal outcomes.

Teaching 

For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages. 

Service (2024/2025)

• Colloquium Committee
• Departmental Committee

Research Interests

• International Relations
• African Security
• Global Governance
• Conflict and Cooperation in Natural Resource Sectors
• Regionalism and Regionalization,
• Non-State Armed Groups
• Arms Trade Treaty
• Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Brief Biography

Dr. J. Andrew Grant is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University. He is the recipient of an Early Researcher Award from the Government of Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation for work on governance issues in natural resource sectors. Dr. Grant has been a Visiting Scholar/Researcher at Northwestern University, USA, and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. During his doctoral studies, he served as an intern at the Campaign for Good Governance in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Dr. Grant is editor of Darfur: Reflections on the Crisis and the Responses (CIR / CIDP 2009) and co-editor of The New Regionalism in Africa (with F. Söderbaum, Ashgate 2003), The Research Companion to Regionalisms (with T.M. Shaw and S. Cornelissen, Ashgate 2012), New Approaches to the Governance of Natural Resources: Insights from Africa (with W.R.N. Compaoré and M.I. Mitchell, Palgrave 2015), and Corporate Social Responsibility and Canada’s Role in Africa’s Extractive Sectors (with N. Andrews, University of Toronto Press 2019). His publications on conflict diamonds and the Kimberley Process, non-state armed groups and regional security, post-conflict reconstruction in fragile states, and governance issues relating to natural resources have been funded by research agencies such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the British Academy-Association of Commonwealth Universities. He conducts field research on a regular basis in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Dr. Grant is a Senior Fellow with the Queen’s Centre for International and Defence Policy, a Faculty Associate with the Queen’s Southern African Research Centre, and a Research Fellow with the Centre for the Study of Security and Development at Dalhousie University. In 2017, he served as the International Studies Association (ISA) Program Chair for some 6,000 participants attending the 58th annual conference. A former Executive Council member of ISA-Canada and Chair of the ISA Committee on Virtual Engagement, he currently serves as the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) Liaison with the ISA and the American Political Science Association (APSA). He also serves on the Executive Council of the International Political Science Association Research Committee #40 (New World Orders) and the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Regional Security and Extractive Industries and Society. 

Teaching

For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages. 

Service (2024/2025)

• Colloquium Committee
• Departmental Committee
• Equity Issues Committee (Chair)

Janet Hiebert joined the Department of Political Studies in 1991 and retired in 2022. Her recent research project examined how devolution agreements for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland influence legislative decision-making; more specifically,  how the processes and institutional dynamics for evaluating whether legislation complies with these devolution agreements constrain and influence government bills and parliamentary review.

Her most recent book, with Anna Drake and Emmett Macfarlane, is Legislating under the Charter: Parliament, Executive Power, and Rights (University of Toronto Press, 2023). She is the author of several books about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, along with numerous papers and chapters on the politics of rights and on campaign finance laws in Canada. 

She is a former president of the Canadian Political Science Association.

Research Interests

American Politics, Racial Politics, Immigration, Quantitative Methods

Fan Lu would be interested in supervising graduate students in the areas of racial politics and American politics. 

Brief Biography

Fan Lu’s primary fields of study are American Politics and Quantitative Methods, with a focus on race. She is interested in understanding political relations between Latinos, Asians, and African Americans. “People of color” in the United States share similar experiences with discrimination and political mis/underrepresentation. Yet, each group has distinct racial and cultural identities that lend themselves to different political needs and aspirations. What motivates them to form political coalitions with one another? What instigates inter-group conflict? She answers these questions using a combination of individual and aggregate level data, with plans to extend the study of racial politics beyond the United States.

Teaching

For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages. 

Service (2024/2025)

• Departmental Committee 
• Equity Issues Committee
• POLS University Research Ethics Board (UREB) Committee

Research Interests

Power-sharing; federalism; conflict resolution; constitutional design; politics of deeply divided places, such as Cyprus, Iraq, and Northern Ireland.

Brief Biography

McGarry’s work has had an important public policy dimension and impact.  He has appeared as an expert witness before the International Relations Committee of the U.S. Congress; participated in briefings of the UN Security Council; and worked with several governments around the world. His work on power-sharing and policing reform in Northern Ireland has been seen as influential in the resolution of its conflict. In 2008-09, McGarry worked as the  "Senior Advisor on Power-Sharing" to the United Nations (Standby Team, Mediation Support Unit), the first person appointed to this position. He is currently the lead advisor on power-sharing and governance in the UN-backed negotiations in Cyprus.

McGarry was appointed as a Canada Research Chair in 2002 (renewed in 2009 and 2016).  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2010 and won the Trudeau Fellowship Prize in 2011.  In 2013, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Killam Prize (Social Sciences), the first political scientist to win the latter award. In 2014, McGarry was awarded the Innis-Gérin Medal, the Royal Society of Canada's highest honour for a social scientist. In 2015 his research on conflict resolution was recognized by the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) as one of the top 50 examples of "game-changing" research conducted in Ontario during the past 100 years. In 2016, he was the co-winner of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Section of the International Studies Association; was awarded the Molson Prize (Social Sciences and Humanities) by the Canada Council for the Arts and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.  In 2022, McGarry was awarded the Pearson Peace Medal, following the footsteps of General Romeo Dallaire, Supreme Court Chief Justice, Beverly McLachlin, and Supreme Court Justice, Louise Arbour.

McGarry has been a regular contributor to public media, in Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.  He has written op-ed pages for several newspapers, including The Globe and Mail, and has also been interviewed for CBC TV, CBC Radio, CTV, National Public Radio, and TVO.

Born and brought up in Ireland, McGarry now lives in Kingston, Ontario.

Teaching

For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages. 

Service (2024/2025)

On sabbatical

Research Interests

Contemporary political thought, including identity politics, feminist theory, critical theory, postmodern theory, Marxist theory, anti-racist theory, psychoanalytic theory, environmental theory, cultural studies, narrative theory, queer theory, race and sexuality studies, feminism, and transgender politics

Eleanor MacDonald is no longer accepting doctoral students.

Brief Biography

Eleanor MacDonald (B.A. and M.A. Carleton University, Ph.D. York University) arrived at Queen’s in 1990 as a Webster Postdoctoral Fellow. In 1993, she joined the Department of Political Studies as a member of the faculty and subsequently was cross-appointed to both the Department of Gender Studies and the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies. From 2004 to 2007, she also served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies. In 1994, MacDonald was a Visiting Scholar in the School of Political Economy at Carleton University, and in 2010, MacDonald was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Canadian Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

The focus of MacDonald’s research and teaching is in contemporary political theory. She has written on identity politics and on the political implications of postmodern and poststructuralist theory. In her current research, she is exploring the concept of property. Recent papers have considered the theoretical grounding of the link between identity and property, and the challenges that environmental concerns pose to the dominant paradigm regarding property ownership.

In 2012, MacDonald received the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Award for Excellence in Teaching. She received the Arts and Science Undergraduate Society Teaching Award in 1991 and was one of four finalists for the Alumni Teaching Award in 2005. In 2010, she was one of ten finalists in the TVO Best Lecturer competition. She has also been a finalist five times (98/99, 02/03, 04/05, 13/14, 14/15) for the Alma Mater Society’s Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching, and was nominated again for this award in 2015/16.

Teaching

For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages. 

Service (2024/2025)

• Departmental Committee
• Equity Issues Committee (Winter 2025)

Research Interests

Welfare; poverty; Basic Income; gendered & racialized violence; Canadian social policy; marginalized women’s activiism

Margaret Little would be interested in supervising graduate students in the areas of poverty in Canada, marginalized women’s activism in Canada, gender/race/indigeneity/sexuality and Canadian social policy.

Brief Biography

I like to think of myself as an anti-poverty activist and academic who works in the area of poverty, welfare reform, anti-poverty activist politics. I am jointly appointed to Gender Studies and Political Studies. In my spare (?!) time I am currently working on a 5-year SSHRC funded project exploring Indigenous, racialized, immigrant and low-income women’s political organizing in Canada during the 1960s-1980s.  We are conducting archival and oral interviews to explore how their political strategies and agendas were quite distinctive from white mainstream feminist activism in the same era.  Don’t ask me about it unless you want to hear a steady stream of excitement for 30 minutes!

I am most interested in supervising students in the areas of poverty, Canadian social policy, and marginalized women’s activism. 

I am very fortunate to have been the recipient of a number of research awards including my current SSHRC Insight Grant (2018-23) entitled “Alternative visions: the politics of motherhood and family among Indigenous, immigrant, racialized and low-income activist women’s groups in Canada, 1960s-1980s”; a SSHRC Standard Grant (2006-2009) entitled "Who's Hurting Now? A Race, Class and Gender Analysis of Neo-Liberal Welfare Reforms in Canada", and the Chancellor's Research Award (2000-2005) to study the impact of welfare reforms under the Ontario Mike Harris Government.

Teaching

For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages. 

Service (2024/2025)

• Departmental Committee
• Field Convenor (Gender and Politics) - Winter 2025 

Research Interests

Margaret Moore has a wide range of interests in contemporary political philosophy. Her interests include territorial justice and obligations with respect to place (ethics of biodiversity), global distributive justice, just war theory, historical injustice, democratic theory, rights, nationalism, multiculturalism, immigration, and selected theorists in the history of political thought. 

Margaret Moore would be interested in supervising students in the areas of territorial rights (including jurisdictional rights, resource rights, common pool resources, some elements of ethics of migration, ethics of biodiversity), global distributive justice, just war theory, historical injustice, democratic theory, rights, nationalism, multiculturalism, and immigration.

Brief Biography

Margaret Moore is a professor in the Political Studies department, cross-appointed as a courtesy in Philosophy where she teaches in the Masters in Political and Legal Theory program. She is the author of four books, Who Should Own Natural Resources? (Polity 2019), A Political Theory of Territory (Oxford 2015), Ethics of Nationalism (Oxford 2001), and Foundations of Liberalism (Oxford 1993) and has edited several other books and journal special issues. A Political Theory of Territory was the winner of the Canadian Philosophical Association’s Best Book Prize in 2017 and was translated into Japanese in 2020. She has published in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Philosophical Studies, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Political Studies, and Ethics and International Affairs. In 2018 she was an RSS visiting fellow at the Australian National University (March-April) and the Olof Palme Visiting Research Professor at the University of Stockholm (July-December), and in 2019 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Teaching

For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages. 

Service (2024/2025)

• Appointments Committee
• Departmental Committee
• Political and Legal Theory Program Convenor
• Renewal, Tenure, and Promotions Committee

Margaret is an Associate Editor of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP).  As a result of responsibilities connected to that position, she declines most review requests.

Research Interests

Military cooperation, NATO alliances, deterrence, and gender dynamics in the armed forces, Women, Peace, and Security

Stéfanie von Hlatky would be interested in supervising graduate students in the areas of Gender, Security, and the Armed Forces; Women, Peace, and Security; NATO and alliance politics.

Brief Biography

Stéfanie von Hlatky is the Canada Research Chair in Gender, Security and the Armed Forces, Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Fellow and former Director of the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s University. She is a Full Professor in the Department of Political Studies and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Arts and Science. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Université de Montréal in 2010, where she was also Executive Director for the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies. She’s held positions at Georgetown University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Dartmouth College, ETH Zurich and was a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at the University of Southern California’s Centre for Public Diplomacy. 

She has published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, Contemporary Security Policy, International Politics, International Affairs, International Journal, the Journal of Global Security Studies, European Security, Asian Security, as well as the Journal of Transatlantic Studies. She has published two monographs with Oxford University Press titled American Allies in Times of War: The Great Asymmetry (2013) and Deploying Feminism: The Role of Gender in NATO Military Operations (2022). Select edited volumes include Total Defence Forces in the Twenty-First Century (co-edited with Joakim Berndtsson and Irina Goldenberg), Transhumanising War: Performance Enhancement and the Implications for Policy, Society, and the Soldier (co-edited by H. Christian Breede and Stéphanie Bélanger) and Countering Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Assessing Domestic and International Strategies (2020).

Stéfanie von Hlatky is the founder of Women in International Security-Canada, and the Honorary Colonel of the Princess of Wales' Own Regiment. She has received grants and awards from NATO, the Canadian Department of National Defence, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Public Safety, the Government of Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation, and Fulbright Canada.