Christian Leuprecht
Professor | Cross-Appointed
He/Him
PhD (Queen's); MA (Toronto), D.É.A. (Grenoble); BA Hons. (Toronto)
School of Policy Studies & Political Studies
Professor | Cross-Appointed
Brief Biography
Christian Leuprecht (Ph.D., Queen’s) is a Class of 1965 Professor in Leadership, Department of Political Science and Economics, Royal Military College, and Eisenhower Fellow at the NATO Defence College in Rome. He is cross-appointed, Department of Political Studies and the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University, where he is affiliated with both, the Queen’s Centre for International and Defence Policy and the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, and Adjunct Research Professor, Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University as well as the Centre for Crime Policy and Research, Flinders University. A recipient of RMC’s Cowan Prize for Excellence in Research and an elected member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada, he is also Munk Senior Fellow in Security and Defence at the Macdonald Laurier Institute. An expert in security and defence, political demography, comparative federalism, and multilevel governance, he has held visiting positions in North America, Europe, and Australia, and is regularly called as an expert witness to testify before committees of Parliament. He holds appointments to the board of two new research institutes funded by the German government, including the German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies.
His publications have appeared in English, German, French, and Spanish and include 12 books and scores of articles that have appeared, inter alia, in the Florida State University Law Review (2019), Electoral Studies (2016), Government Information Quarterly (2016), Armed Forces and Society (2015),& Global Crime (2015, 2013), the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (2014, Maureen Molot Prize for Best Article), Canadian Public Administration (2014), the Canadian Journal of Political Science (2012, 2003), Regional and Federal Studies (2012), and Terrorism and Political Violence (2018, 2017, 2011). His editorials appear regularly across Canada’s national newspapers and he is a frequent commentator in domestic and international media.
Leuprecht has been a Matthew Flinders Fellow at the Flinders University of South Australia (2017-2018), held a senior and visiting fellowships at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study (2016), the Helmut-Schmidt-University of the Bundeswehr (2016), Université Pierre-Mendès France (2015), the University of Augsburg in Germany (2011), the Swedish National Defence College (recurring) and the European Academy (recurring), and as the Bicentennial Visiting Associate Professor in Canadian Studies at Yale University (2009-2010). He is a research affiliate at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (since 2005), the Network for Terrorism, Security, and Society (since 2012), l’Université de Montréal’s International Centre for Comparative Criminology (since 2014), the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur les relations Internationales du Canada et du Québec (since 2015), l’Observatoire sur la radicalization et l’extrémisme violent (since 2015), the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy (since 2010), the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania and Bryn Mawr College (2003), the World Population Program at the International Institute for Advanced Systems Analysis in Vienna, Austria (2002), and held doctoral (2001-2003) and postdoctoral (2003-2005) fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He holds a Ph.D. from Queen’s University (2003), and graduate degrees in Political Science (1998) and French (1999) from the University of Toronto as well as the Institut d’Études Politiques at the Université Pierre-Mendès France in Grenoble (1997).
From 2015 to 2018 he held a Governor-in-Council appointment to the governing Council of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada where he also served on the Executive Committee and as Chair of the Committee on Discovery Research. He is also immediate past president (2014-2018) of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee 01: Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution. Since joining RMCC in 2005, he has served as Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Deputy Head of the Department of Political Science and Economics. He has twice received the RMCC Commandant’s Commendation for Excellence in Service. A long-time proponent of experiential learning, Leuprecht has also been a finalist for RMCC’s Teaching Excellence Award and has received honourable mention for the Queen’s University Undergraduate Research Mentorship Award (2017). He is a member of the editorial boards of Armed Forces & Society, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, Current Sociology’s Manuscript Series, and the Springer book series in Advances in Science and Technologies for Security Applications. Previously, he was associate editor of the Queen’s Policy Studies series published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Research and Publications
Projects in progress at the Comparative National Security and Defence Lab:
- Methodological innovations in the application of social network analysis to transnational crime, including illicit trade and trade fraud, and terrorism
- Innovative applications of data analytics of semi-structured heterogeneous datasets to security problems
- Transnational Criminal and Terrorist Movement and Flows
- Proceeds of Crime (Anti-Money Laundering), Terrorist Financing, and Tax Avoidance
- Cybersecurity and Cybercrime
- Signals Intelligence
- National Security and Intelligence Accountability, Review, and Oversight
- National and subregional Border Integrity, Security, Cultures and Cross-border cooperation, policy networks, and governance
- Governance and Operational innovations to policing, including Non-Core Policing and Alternative Service Delivery
- Diaspora influence over Canadian international policy
- Political Demography and Diversity in the Armed Forces
- The consequences of demographic and climate change on domestic conflict and stability operations
- Demographic and resource determinants of conflict and instability in Mali
Selected Publications
Select Recent Publications
- Skillicorn, DB and Leuprecht, C. Copresence Networks. IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics.
- Skillicorn, DB, Walther, O, Zhen, Q and Leuprecht, C. Distance, Borders, and Time: The Diffusion and Permeability of Political Violence in North and West Africa. Terrorism and Political Violence.
- Skillicorn, DB. and Leuprecht, C.& Clustering Semi-Structured Heterogeneous Social Science Datasets for National Security Applications. In Security by Design: Innovative Perspectives on Complex Problems. Ed. Anthony Masys. New York: VS Springer, pp. 181-192.
- Leuprecht, C, Sokolsky, JJ and Derow, J. Paying it Forward: Canada’s Renewed Commitment to NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence. International Journal.
- Leuprecht, C, Szeman, J and Skilliborn, DB. The Damoclean sword of offensive cyber: Policy uncertainty and collective insecurity. Contemporary Security Policy.
- Hataley, T. and Leuprecht, C. Bilateral Coordination of Border Security, Intelligence Sharing, Counter-Terrorism, and Counter-Radicalization . In Canada Among Nations 2017. Eds. Christopher Sands, David Carment, and Inger Weibust. Baskingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Ghanbarpour-Dizboni, A. and Leuprecht, C. Framing, Branding and Explaining: A Survey of Perception of Islam and Muslims in Canadian polls, Government, and Academia. In Islam in the West: Perceptions and Reactions . New Ed., Eds. Abe Ata and Jan Ali. Sydney: Oxford University Press, chapter 3.
- Leuprecht, C., Sokolsky, JJ and Hughes, T. North American Strategic Defence in the 21st Century: Security and Sovereignty in an Uncertain World . New York: VS Springer.
- Read the introductory chapter here.
- Featured in Maclean’s.
- Leuprecht, C, Sokolsky, J and Derow, J. On The Baltic Watch: The Past, Present, and Future of Canada’s Commitment to NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence in Latvia. Ottawa: Macdonald Laurier Institute.
- Leuprecht, C, Koelling, M and Hataley, T. Public Security in Federal Polities. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Leuprecht, C. and MacLellan, S. Governing Cyber Security in Canada, Australia and the United States. Waterloo, ON: Centre for International Governance Innovation.
- Leuprecht C and Hataley, T. Journal of Borderland Studies 33(3). Special Issue on Determinants of Cross-Border Cooperation.
- Leuprecht, C, and McNorton, H. Bringing Security and Intelligence Into Focus: How to Clarify the Roles of Newly Created Accountability Bodies. Ottawa: CDA Institute & Macdonald Laurier Institute . February.
- Halloran, PJ., Leuprecht, C., Ghanbapour-Dizboni, A., Green, A.,and Adelstein, D. 2018. The terrorist resourcing model applied to Canada . Journal of Money Laundering Control. 21(1): 33-46.
- Walther, O, Leuprecht, C and Skillicorn, DB. Political Fragmentation and Alliances among Armed Non-State Actors in North and Western Africa (1997-2014).Terrorism and Political Violence.
- Leuprecht, C, Walther, O, Skillicorn, DB, and Ryde-Collins, H. A relational approach to convergence with transnational organized crime. Terrorism and Political Violence Terrorism and Political Violence 29(5): 902-921
- Leuprecht, C. 2017. Force 2.0: Fixing the Governance, Leadership, and Structure of the RCMP. Ottawa: Macdonald Laurier Institute. September.
- Featured in The Globe and Mail
- Leuprecht, C. 2017. “Once Irregular Migrants are at the border, it’s too late,” Inside Policy, March, pp. 12-14.