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Team Member

Picture of Dr. P. Whitney Lackenbauer

Dr. P. Whitney Lackenbauer

Network Lead, Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Study of the Canadian North, and Professor, School for the Study of Canada, Trent University

Dr. Lackenbauer is one of Canada’s leading experts on Arctic security, history, and contemporary policy. He has received a long list of honours, awards, and grants for his scholarship. He has more than forty (co)authored or (co)edited books to his credit, including Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North (winner of the 2009 Donner Prize – the award for the best public policy book by a Canadian), A Commemorative History of Aboriginal People in the Canadian Military (2010), The Canadian Rangers: A Living History (shortlisted for the 2014 J.W. Dafoe book prize), China’s Arctic Ambitions and What They Mean for Canada (2018), and Breaking the Ice Curtain? Russia, Canada, and Arctic Security in a Changing Circumpolar World (2019). Dr. Lackenbauer was the 2017-18 Killam Visiting Scholar at the University of Calgary, a Fulbright Fellow at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in 2010, and a Canadian International Council Research Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in 2008-09. He co-led the Emerging Arctic Security Environment project through ArcticNet (2010-15) and was co-chair of the Munk School-Gordon Foundation Arctic Peoples and Security program (2011-13). He was 2018 Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Centre for National Security Studies (CNSS) at Canadian Forces College, and became Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Study of the Canadian North at Trent University in July 2018.

Lackenbauer has a distinguished record of university and national service that has provided him with the requisite experience to coordinate and manage our collaborative network and engage with the Defence Team at many levels. In recognition of his work with Indigenous peoples and the military in Canada’s North, he was made the Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group in fall 2014 and was reappointed for a second three-year term in fall 2017. Lackenbauer also has extensive experience consulting to governments and non-government organizations on governance, sovereignty, security, and other policy issues.

For a detailed list of his extensive service in academic, government, and community circles, please see his website at www.lackenbauer.ca.