Honouring a lifetime of achievement

Professor Emeritus Kim Richard Nossal has earned the 2026 Mildred A. Schwartz Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Canadian Politics Section. The award honours outstanding contributions to the study of Canadian politics.

“I received this award in September, 50 years after I started teaching political science at McMsster University – and so in that sense, it was a huge honour to have a lifetime of work recognized in this way,” Dr. Nossal (Political Studies) says. “But it also was a result of my good fortune to have been able to spend my career in two departments — at McMaster from 1976 to 2001 and at Queen’s from 2001 until my retirement in 2020 — with colleagues whose commitment to teaching and research helped make that work so much easier.”

Dr. Nossal, who joined Queen’s in 2001, is widely recognized for his scholarship on Canadian foreign and defence policy and his contributions to understanding Canada’s place in the world. Over the course of his career, Dr. Nossal has authored or co-authored 12 books, 13 edited books, 68 journal articles, and 98 book chapters.

He has also contributed extensively to public discussions of Canadian foreign and defence policy through media commentary, parliamentary testimony and public speaking.

“I had an interest in global politics as a result of growing up in Hong Kong during the war in Vietnam and the cultural revolution in China, and I was inspired to seek a career in academia by my professors at the University of Toronto who were all excellent scholars and teachers,” Dr. Nossal says about his career path.

In his nomination, Dr. Jonathan Rose, former Political Studies Department Head and a colleague of Nossal’s for 25 years, highlighted Dr. Nossal’s contributions as a scholar, teacher, mentor and academic leader, describing him as “a scholar who commands respect across the discipline, who takes teaching seriously, and who sees professional service as part of the scholar’s vocation.”

Dr. Nossal’s contributions have been recognized through numerous honours, including Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada, the International Studies Association’s Distinguished Scholar Award, and an honorary doctorate from the Royal Military College of Canada. At Queen’s, his commitment to undergraduate teaching is further reflected in the Kim Richard Nossal Undergraduate Teaching Award, a student-led award established by the Department of Political Studies in 2023.