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Timothy Donais is Chair of the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he teaches in the area of peace and conflict studies. From 2018-22, he served as Director of the Master in International Public Policy (MIPP) program, and as both Associate and Co-Director of the PhD program in Global Governance, at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA). He was also Chair of the Department of Global Studies from 2013-16. Prior to joining Laurier and the BSIA in 2008, he taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Windsor, and was a post-doctoral fellow at York University’s Centre for International and Security Studies. He received his PhD in Political Science from Toronto's York University in 2003.
Since the mid-1990’s, Tim’s research has focused on international intervention in fragile and conflict-affected states, with a particular emphasis on peacekeeping, peacebuilding and security sector reform. His interest in and approach to these issues was profoundly shaped by experiences in Bosnia in the late 1990’s, both as a doctoral researcher and as a staff member of the Bosnia mission of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE). Since that time, he has conducted extensive field research – with an enduring emphasis on the complex interactions between local and international actors in conflict-affected environments – across the Balkans, as well as in Haiti, Afghanistan, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
Tim’s current research project – funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) – focuses on the implementation of protection of civilians (PoC) mandates in UN peacekeeping operations. The project seeks to develop a clearer understanding of what civilian protection means in practice through an examination of how ambitious (and often ambiguous) protection mandates within UN Security Council Resolutions are being translated into concrete protection strategies on the ground in mission-hosting states (including South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Finally, through his involvement with the BSIA’s Conflict and Security Research Cluster, he also co-edited (with Alistair Edgar and Kirsten Van Houten) the recently-published Sustainable Development Goal 16 and the Global Governance of Violence: Critical Reflections on the Uncertain Future of Peace (Routledge). This volume offers a critical mid-term assessment of the extent to which Goal 16’s ambition of promoting ‘peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development’ is being achieved.
- Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Research Grants, 2007-11; 2019-24
- Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Merit Award: 2023, 2017, 2014, 2010
- Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) Research Grant, 2012-14
I am willing to supervise graduate students in the areas of peace and conflict studies, security studies, or post-conflict peacebuilding.
- “Local Turns and New Generations: Why SSR Has Struggled to Keep Up,” In S. Africa et al (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Security Sector Reform (Routledge, forthcoming 2026).
- Peacekeeping and the Protection of Civilians: From Moral Imperative to Effective Practice (Routledge, 2025).
- “The Triumph of Non-Intervention? Haiti and the Contemporary Politics of Rescue,” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America 24:2 (2025); https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/the-triumph-of-non-intervention-haiti-and-the-contemporary-politics-of-rescue/
- Sustainable Development Goal 16 and the Global Governance of Violence: Critical Reflections on the Uncertain Future of Peace (co-editor with A. Edgar and K. Van Houten) (Routledge, 2023).
- “Protection through Peacebuilding in South Sudan,” (co-authored with Ayiko Solomon),African Security Review 31:1 (2022); DOI: https://doi.org/1080/10246029.2021.1968916
- “Local Ownership, Legitimacy and Peacebuilding,” in O.P. Richmond and G. Visoka (eds.),The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation (Oxford University Press, 2021), 550-563.
- “Gender and Protection in UN Peacekeeping: Towards Inclusive Protection Practice,” (co-authored with Sarah Murray),Balsillie Papers, 4:1 (2021), 1-12; https://balsilliepapers.ca/bsia-paper/gender-and-protection-in-un-peacekeeping-towards-inclusive-protection-practice/
- “The Rule of Law, the Local Turn, and Re-thinking Accountability in Security Sector Reform Processes,” (co-authored with Ahmet Barbak),Peacebuilding (Special Issue on ‘Letting the State off the Hook’, co-edited by J. Quinn and A. Kochanski), 9:2, (2021), 1-16; https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2021.1895622
- “Protection of Civilians and Peacekeeping’s Accountability Deficit,” (co-authored with Eric Tanguay),International Peacekeeping, 28:4 (2021), 553-57; https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2021.1880900
- “Generations of Constructing Peace: The Constructivism Paradigm and Peacebuilding,” (co-authored with Erin McCandless), in H. Carey (ed.),Peacebuilding Paradigms: The Impact of Theoretical Diversity on Implementing Sustainable Peace (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020), 126-144.
GS232 - Peace and Conflict Transformation: An Introduction (Global Studies)
IP300 - Integrated Seminar in International Policy (International Policy Option)
IP603 - Comparative Public Policy (MA in International Public Policy)
GV733 - Security Ontology (PhD Program in Global Governance)
Contact Info:
Office location: DAWB 5-120
Office hours: For Winter 2026, Wednesdays 2:30-3:30, or by appointment.
Languages spoken: English