The Glendon School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA)

The Glendon School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) is a unique global institution that contributes to advancing public policy and international affairs in an interdisciplinary and bilingual environment. The GSPIA is a dynamic and collegial community of talented students, faculty, and fellows who share a passion for shaping Canada’s future and contributing to innovative and effective public policy. Our alumni have succeeded as leaders in public policy, government, non-governmental organizations, education and the business sector.  

Allison O’Neil
Class of 2021

Allison graduated from the MPIA program in 2021. She wrote a Major Research Paper entitled ‘From Apology toward Reconciliation? Federal Policy Discourse about Services for Indigenous Children in Canada, 2008–2020, and she received the prestigious Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) and CGS-M for her research projects in the MPIA.  Before starting at Glendon, she worked for two years at the Kyoto City Board of Education in Japan as a language teacher. She completed her bachelor’s degree in International Relations at the University of British Columbia in 2015.

Aletheia Delivré
Class of 2018
Title: Project Officer
Company: UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning

Aletheia graduated from the Double-Degree MPIA programme at Glendon and IEP Strasbourg in 2018. She was offered a consultant position immediately following graduation at the UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, based in Paris, where she had done an internship earlier in 2018 within the R&D team. Although she only started working as a full-time member on the R&D team a few months prior, she already had rare opportunities to participate in some very interesting things in the context of research on SDGs, education and cities. After months spent defining and revising research tools and our analytical framework, with a small team of experts, they launched a pilot on the field early December 2018 – her first official UNESCO mission to the north of France – with approval from UNESCO to take the programme international in 2019-2020. The official online launch was live in late December, on the UNESCO-IIEP web page, Twitter and LinkedIn. She is deeply grateful for the important role the double-degree MPIA programme with Strasbourg played in the opportunities that presented themselves both during and after her studies.

Dr. Emily Laxer 

In 2019, Dr. Laxer launched a new book investigating the politics of secularism in France and Quebec and, in 2020 was named the recipient of the Canadian Sociological Association’s “John Porter Award” in recognition of her book Unveiling the Nation: The Politics of Secularism in France and Quebec. In 2020, Dr. Laxer has also published an article on Muslim participation in society – that is, political and civic incorporation – in two countries: Canada and France. As of June 2020, Dr. Laxer is the principal investigator of the SSHRC Insight Development Grant “Politicians Against the Law: Populist Representations of Rights and Legality in Contemporary Canadian Politics”. She holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, a Master of Arts from McGill University, and she teaches PIA 6300 State and Society.