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John Alexander Wilson Gunn, a world-renowned scholar in 17th and 18th-century political thought, died March 7, 2023, in Kingston. Known professionally as J.A.W. Gunn, he was called Jock by family and friends. Jock is survived by his partner Mary Jane; children James and Andrea (Manuel); and brother Ted (Louise).

Jock was born in Quebec City in 1937. He earned an honours B.A. in politics and history from ����ֱ�� in 1959; an M.A. in political economy from the University of Toronto in 1961; and a D. Phil. from Nuffield College, University of Oxford, in 1966.

Jock joined the Queen’s Political and Economic Science department in 1960 as a lecturer while still completing his graduate studies. His professors at Queen’s, John Meisel and Alec Corry, had recognized their former student’s spark of brilliance, and wanted to bring him back to Kingston. After Jock completed his doctoral studies, he returned to Queen’s to support the nascent Department of Political Studies under the direction of Meisel, who later wrote in his memoirs:

In Jock Gunn, we recruited a peerless scholar whose extensive command of the literature and commitment to a lofty ideal of a university added a significant dimension to what we had to offer.

Jock’s doctoral thesis (directed by John Plamenatz) was later published as Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (1969). In 1971, he published Factions No More: Attitudes to Party in Government and Opposition in Eighteenth-Century England.

While still a student, Jock worked with Frontier College, supporting that organization’s goal to bring literacy and the love of reading to adult learners. As a professor, Jock challenged his students to read deeply, think critically, and write clearly and sensibly. In his classroom, Jock never relied on notes: in his lectures, he spoke both spontaneously and eloquently on political ideas and ideals. His classes were designed to spark intellectual curiosity and to help his students utilize existing - or develop new - skills in comprehension, inquiry, and analysis. In addition to his undergraduate teaching, Jock supervised 14 doctoral students. Many of his students, both undergraduate and graduate, kept in touch with him decades after they graduated. Some of his best students went on to become writers, journalists, diplomats, lawyers, policymakers, and teachers; Jock followed each of their career paths with interest.

Between 1975 and 1983, Jock served as head of the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s. There, he was one of three editors of the first two volumes of the letters of Benjamin Disraeli (1982). Jock’s next book, Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, was published in 1983. This work, drawing upon a variety of primary sources, from newspapers and political pamphlets to parliamentary debates, sermons, and private correspondence, offered a bold new approach to the understanding of the public mind and political ideas in Britain. That year, Jock was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his remarkable contributions to the social sciences.

Later turning to the study of French political ideas, Jock published Queen of the World: Opinion in the Public Life of France from the Renaissance to the Revolution in 1995. The same year, succeeding his colleague John Meisel, he was appointed by the Queen’s Board of Trustees the Sir Edward Peacock Professor of Political Studies, a position that honours outstanding contribution to the field of political studies. His citation noted that Jock was “one of the department’s most distinguished academics over the past three decades. His international reputation in political thought has brought credit both to the department and the university.” Jock allocated a portion of the funds associated with the Peacock Chair to purchase items for the British Political Pamphlets Collection at the Queen’s University Library. He also contributed his expertise in recommending notable and rare acquisitions for the library.

Jock retired officially from Queen’s in 2002 but, for several years and due to popular demand, came back to teach undergraduate courses. His last book, When the French Tried to Be British: Party, Opposition, and the Quest for Civil Disagreement 1814 - 1848, was published in 2009.

Jock’s family thanks those who supported him in his last months, notably the staff at Cataraqui Heights Retirement Residence; St. Elizabeth’s Nursing Services; Home and Community Care Support Services; and Dr. Marie Colantonio.

Donations in Jock’s memory may be made to Queen’s University to be directed to the , or to a charity of your choice.

A reception in Jock’s memory was held on March 25, 2023 at James Reid Funeral Home in Kingston.

Before coming to ����ֱ�� in 1975 Colin Leys taught at Balliol College, Oxford; Kivukoni College in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; and the Universities of Sussex, Nairobi, and Sheffield. His work has primarily been on the theory and politics of development, with particular reference to Africa and the UK. His publications include European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, 1959); Underdevelopment in Kenya;The Political Economy of Neocolonialism (James Currey and University of California Press, 1975); Politics in Britain (2nd edition, Verso, 1989); Namibia's Liberation Struggle; The Two-Edged Sword (with John S. Saul and others, James Currey, 1995); The Rise and Fall of Development Theory (James Currey, 1996); The End of Parliamentary Socialism (with Leo Panitch, Verso, 1997); and Market Driven-Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest (Verso, 2001).

Professor Emeritus Colin Leys retired from ����ֱ�� Department of Political Studies in 1996.

Brief Biography

Charles Pentland was born in Montreal. He completed his BA with Double Honours in Political Science and International Studies at UBC (1965); his MA in Political Science at UBC (1966); and a PhD in International Relations at the University of London,School of Economics and Political Science (1970).

Charles joined the Department of Political Studies at ����ֱ�� in 1969 and was a full professor from 1982 until his retirement in 2015, teaching subjects encompassing international organizations, global governance, the EU, Canadian foreign policy, IPE and IR theory. He also served as the Head of Department from 1987-92. Throughout his career, he held several visiting positions at the Institut d'Etudes Europeennes, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales et Communautaires, Universite d'Aix-Marseille, the University of Manitoba, and the University of Cambridge.  Charles also served as co-editor of the Journal of European Integration and of the international Journal and spent eight years as Director of the ����ֱ�� Centre for International Relations.

Charles' research spans a great many topics and issues of international relations and comparative politics, but his most recent interests are concerned with the political development and external relations of the European Union, in particular the security implications of its enlargement to include countries in Central and Eastern Europe, its role in the Balkans, and its development of a common foreign and security policy.

Obituary of John Meisel

Tuesday, October 23rd, 1923 - Sunday, March 30th, 2025

Surrounded by the love of Hanna and her family, John passed away peacefully on March 30th, 2025.

Born in Vienna to Czech parents, John travelled extensively with his family before and during the Second World War. Thanks to the Bata Shoe Company, employers of his father Fryda, the family escaped the Holocaust, living in the Netherlands, Morocco and Haiti before coming to Canada in January 1942. As a young teenager, John attended Ottershaw College in the UK and later Pickering College in Newmarket, Ontario. He then studied at the University of Toronto, eventually earning his PhD at the London School of Economics.

For more than five decades John taught political science at Queen’s University, mentoring and inspiring many future politicians, diplomats and journalists. He was a co-founder of the The Canadian Journal of Political Science. His scholarly writing often featured titles reflecting his wicked wit, sense of humour and love of puns. From 1979 to 1983 John served as Chair of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, during a challenging period when technology was beginning to outpace regulation. After returning to Queen’s, he dedicated much of his time to the study of broadcast regulation and cultural policy. In 1989 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1999.

John loved classical music and was an enthusiastic concert-goer. He loved physical activity, bicycled, played tennis, cross-country skied and hiked in the Austrian Alps. He was also an avid photographer and old friends still treasure his exquisite photos on his Christmas cards.

Predeceased by his artist wife Muriel (Kelly), his sister Rose and niece Victoria Wilcox, John is survived by Hanna Dodwell, his partner, caretaker and second wife of many years, his nephew Carl (David) Wilcox and his great-niece Simon Wilcox - along with loyal former students, colleagues and friends.

We express our sincere thanks to the dedicated staff at St. Lawrence Place Retirement Home, Providence Transitional Care Centre, and Providence Manor.

A celebration of life will be held at a later date. Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to Providence Care () in John’s memory.

A Brief Biography of John Meisel | Department of Political Studies

A professor at Queen’s University beginning in 1949, John Meisel (1923-2025) was a pioneer in research on political behavior in Canada, writing widely on political parties, elections, Quebec politics, broadcasting, and culture policy. Throughout his career, he led the broader scholarly community, serving as the founding editor of both the Canadian Journal of Political Science and the International Political Science Review, as well as the president of the Royal Society of Canada.

Professor Meisel was also a public intellectual, contributing to public debates over major controversies. During the political battles over the constitution, he worked hard at maintaining intellectual linkages between Quebec and the rest of Canada. A strong supporter of Canadian culture and the arts, he was appointed as chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), overseeing the introduction of pay TV in the country. His contributions to Canada were recognized in 1989 when he was made an officer of the Order of Canada, and again in 1999, when he was promoted to Companion, the highest grade in the Order.

Charming, engaging, optimistic, enthusiastic: as a member of the Queen’s community, John was all of these and more.

He was a wonderful teacher, inspiring generations of students to engage in political and cultural life. As department head, he recruited stellar new faculty, helping to build the department into one of the strongest in the country. He was an enthusiastic mentor, supporting his younger colleagues and drawing them into national and international networks. John was a symbol of the best of the Queen’s tradition.

To learn more about John, we highly recommend his 2012 memoir, (Wintergreen Studios Press), and this brief video, , filmed in 2017.  

The John Meisel Lecture Series will continue his legacy of engagement of faculty, students and the community in ways that would make John proud.  

Research Interests

• Global Political Economy
• Global Development
• Global Finance
• Geopolitics of Debt
• Corporate Power
• Political Economy of Housing

Brief Biography

Susanne Soederberg is a Professor, who is jointly appointed to the Department of Political Studies and Department of Global Development Studies. Dr. Soederberg earned her doctorate from Johann-Wolfgang Goethe Frankfurt University in Germany.  Prior to her appointment at Queen’s in 2004, Professor Soederberg held a tenure-track appointment in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. 

Dr. Soederberg has been awarded the prestigious Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professorship in Studies of Contemporary Society (2015-2016) at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies where she is undertaking research on the linkages between low-income housing, finance and social reproduction in Berlin and Dublin.

Selected Publications

Single-Authored Books

The Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry:  Money, Discipline and the Surplus Population. London: Routledge/RIPE Series in Global Political Economy, 2014. 

*Winner of the 2015 International Political Economy Group (IPEG) of the British International Studies Association Book Prize.

Corporate Power and Ownership in Contemporary Capitalism: The Politics of Resistance and Domination. London:  Routledge/ RIPE Series in Global Political Economy, 2010.

*Winner of the Rik Davidson/Studies in Political Economy 2011 Book Prize.

*Short-listed for the IPEG BISA 2011 Book Prize.

Global Governance in Question: Empire, Class, and the New Common Sense in Managing North-South Relations.  London:  Pluto Books and Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.

The Politics of the New International Financial Architecture: Reimposing Neoliberal Domination in the Global South.  London:  Zed Books / New York:  Palgrave, 2004.

Editor of Special Issues in Scholarly Journals

‘The Politics of Debt and Discipline: Law, Money, and the State, ' with Adrienne Roberts Critical Sociology, Vol. 40 (5), 2014

'Repoliticizing Debt', with Gavin Fridell Third World Quarterly, Vol. 34(4), 2013.

‘Governing the New International Financial Architecture,’ Global Governance, Vol. 7(4), 2001.

Scholarly Journal Articles

‘Subprime Housing goes South: Constructing Securitized Mortgages for the Poor in Mexico,’ Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, Vol. 47(2), 2015, pp. 481-499.

‘'The US Debtfare State and the Credit Card Industry: Forging Spaces of Dispossession,’ Antipode: Radical Journal of Geography, Vol. 45(2), 2013, pp. 493-512. 

The Mexican Debtfare State: Micro-Lending, Dispossession, and the Surplus Population,’ Special Issue: ‘The Rebound of the Capitalist State: The re-articulation of state-capital relations in the global crisis,’ Globalizations, Vol. 9 (4), 2012, pp. 561-575. 

‘Cannibalistic Capitalism:  The Paradoxes of Neoliberal Pension Securitization,’ Leo Panitch, Greg Albo, Vivek Chibber (eds) Socialist Register 2011: The Crisis this Time, London: Merlin Press, 2010, pp. 224-241.

‘The Marketization of Social Justice:  The Case of the Sudan Divestment Campaign,’ New Political Economy, Vol. 14 (4), 2009, pp. 211-230.

Deconstructing the Official Treatment for “Enronitis”:  The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Neoliberal Governance of Corporate America.’ Critical Sociology, Vol. 34 (5), 2008, pp. 657-680.

‘The Transnational Debt Architecture and Emerging Markets:  Politics of Paradoxes and Punishment,’ Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26 (6), 2005, pp. 927-950.

‘A Historical Materialist Account of the Chilean Capital Control: Prototype Policy for Whom?’ Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 9 (3), 2002, pp. 490-512.

Brief Biography

Dr. Grazia (Grace) Scoppio is a Professor in the Department of Defence Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC), is cross-appointed in the Queen’s University Department of Political Studies, and is a fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s. She has been selected as a Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Peace and War Studies at Norwich University, in Vermont, US. During her residency at Norwich, from January to May 2021, her research will focus on immigrants’ participation in the military from an international perspective. Dr. Scoppio was the Dean of Continuing Studies at RMC from 2017 to 2020 after having served as Associate Dean from 2013 to 2016. Between 2002 and 2013, she held appointments at the Canadian Defence Academy and the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute (CFLI).

Dr. Scoppio is an active member of various academic societies including the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, and the Comparative and International Education Society of Canada, where she has been part of the Executive since 2001.

From 2014 to 2017, she was the French Editor of the bilingual, peer-reviewed, international journal Comparative and International Education, jointly with the English Editor, Dr. Marianne Larsen from Western University. In 2013, the Commander of Military Personnel Command was awarded the CFLI, of which she was a member, a commendation in recognition of CFLI’s development and implementation of a series of leadership programs for Veterans Affairs Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In 2018, she was a member of the first Halifax Peace With Women Fellowship Selection Committee for the Halifax International Security Forum. Because of her expertise, Dr. Scoppio is often contacted to provide contributions to the media and to testify before Parliamentary committees.

Current Research and Projects

Dr. Scoppio’s current research is on immigrants’ participation in the military from an international perspective.

Research Interests

• Canadian foreign and defence policy
• International security relations
• American foreign and defence policy

Brief Biography

Dr. Sokolsky has taught at the Canadian Studies Center at SAIS, Dalhousie University and Duke University. He has been a visiting Canada-US Fulbright Scholar at Bridgewater State and has served as a consultant to several government offices including the Associate Assistant Deputy Minister of National Defence (Policy) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He has been a member of the Secretariat Working Group of the NATO/Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defence Academies and Security Studies Institutes.

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

Research Interests

Issues of democracy and diversity, in particular models of citizenship and social justice within multicultural societies, and animal rights.

Brief Biography

Will Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s University, where he has taught since 1998. He has published eight books and over 200 articles, which have been translated into 32 languages, and has received several awards. His books include (1990; second edition 2002),  (1995), which was awarded the Macpherson Prize by the Canadian Political Science Association, and the Bunche Award by the American Political Science Association,  (2007), which was awarded the North American Society for Social Philosophy’s 2007 Book Award, and most recently  (2011), co-authored with Sue Donaldson.