The world is increasingly defined by dynamic regions, but no region is as important to the United States and as poorly understood as the one that it inhabits — North America. Since 1994, trade and investment among Canada, Mexico, and the United States have tripled, and immigration has soared. Yet, the three governments have not kept pace with the changes, and there is a lack of awareness that new approaches are needed to build a new North America. The Center for North American Studies was established to educate a new generation of students, to promote policy debate among the governments and the public, and to undertake research on ideas for a continental future.

Senior Fellows, 2011-2012

Victor Armony (PhD, Université du Québec) is a professor of sociology and director of the Observatory of the Americas at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). During 2011-2012, he holds a Canada-US Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at American University and at the University of Texas at Austin.  Dr. Armony has been researching pluralism and integration in Canada from the perspective of immigrants and minorities. His last book deals with nationalism, language, and ethnic diversity in Quebec (Le Québec expliqué aux immigrants, Montreal, VLB, 2007) and his most recent publication has been “The Challenge of Naming the Other in Latin America” (in Identity Politics in the Public Realm: Bringing Institutions Back).  Dr. Armony currently holds a 3-year grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to study the Latino population in Canada.

Stephen Blank (PhD, Harvard) has enjoyed a career in the academic, business and not-for-profit communities and is a well-known North Americanist. Blank served as Claude Bissell Visiting Professor of US-Canada Relations at the University of Toronto, Fulbright Distinguished Professor at the University of Montreal and Ross Distinguished Visiting Professor of Canada-US Business at Western Washington University. He was Director of the Center for International Business Studies at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business.  Blank was a visiting professor at Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, Dalhousie, UBC, the International University of Japan, and HEC-Montreal.  He was Managing Director of the Pan-American Partnership for Business Education, an alliance of four North American business schools and a founding partner of Multinational Strategies, Inc., and Stephen Blank Associates.  In 2002, he was awarded L’Ordre National du Quebec by the Government of Quebec.  In 2009, he received the first North American Citizen award by the North American Center for Transborder Studies at Arizona State University and the first North America Works award by Kansas City, Missouri.

Christopher Sands (PhD Johns Hopkins) is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute, where he specializes on Canada and U.S.-Canadian relations, as well as North American economic integration. He is also a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, an adjunct professor in Government at the American University School of Public Affairs, and lectures at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State and for the US Department of Homeland Security. In 1993, Sands began a long association with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) where he focused on US-Canada relations and North American integration issues, including a major study with Sidney Weintraub of The North American Auto Industry under NAFTA (CSIS Press, 1998). In 1999-2000, Sands was a Fulbright Scholar and visiting fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Brian Bow (PhD Cornell) is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Fellow at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  He is an expert on US-Canada relations, US foreign policy, Canadian foreign policy, and regional politics in North America. He is the author of The Politics of Linkage: Power, Interdependence and Ideas in Canada-US Relations (UBC Press) , which was awarded the Donner Prize as the best public policy book published in Canada in 2009.  He is also co-editor (with Patrick Lennox) of An Independent Foreign Policy for Canada?: Challenges and Choices for the Future (University of Toronto Press, 2008), and more than a dozen chapters and articles on various aspects of US-Canada relations and Canadian foreign policy.