LCol (Ret'd) Eleanor Taylor

Eleanor Taylor is a native of Antigonish Nova Scotia who completed a 25 year career as a regular force infantry officer and now runs Eleanor Taylor Consulting, a company that supports the development teams and leaders who thrive in adversity. While in uniform, she had many rewarding experiences at home and abroad. Chief among them was her deployment to Kandahar Afghanistan during which she led operations with soldiers from the Canadian, US, and Afghan armies and her work with Special Operations Forces Command developing interagency partnerships.

Eleanor has been asked to share her experiences on Women in Combat and the integration of women into non-traditional trades with academics and Armed Forces of other nations who are studying the issues. In 2013, she was named by the Women's Executive Network (WXN) as one of Canada's Top 100 Women. In 2019 she was invested into the Order of Military Merit Order of Military Merit which recognizes exceptional service. Eleanor evolved from a shy high-school kid to a successful combat leader in a male dominated profession and believes that equally significant transformations are accessible to everyone with the right training and mentorship.

Eleanor lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia with her children, Isaac and Beth. She is passionate about projects in support of veterans’ wellness and women in leadership.

KCIS 2021 will be broadcast simultaneously in English and French.

From 2020 to the present, national armed forces from all over the world have been called upon to support civilian authorities in the fight to defeat COVID-19. In addition to responding domestically, the military has also adapted the conduct of its operations abroad. As the vaccines continue to be rolled out (unevenly across regions), it is time to take stock of the pandemic from the perspective of Western armed forces.

KCIS 2021 will incorporate lessons learned to strengthen national emergency resilience moving forward. This conference also provides an opportunity to reassess allied threat assessments, asking which vulnerabilities have been made more salient by this global crisis.

*This is a free digital event taking place over Zoom from October 25-28th, 2021. Conference registration is required to attend.

For more information visit thekcis.org

Event Partners

KCIS 2021 Sponsors  

Join four political scientists from Queen's University and the Royal Military College of Canada for an analysis of the 2021 Canadian federal election.  The panelists will address a range of issues, including electoral integrity, Canadian foreign policy, gender issues, and more.  Bring your questions!

Moderator:

Jonathan Rose

Professor and Head of the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University with research interests in Canadian Politics, mass media, political communication, political advertising, propaganda and the practice of deliberative democracy.

Panelists:

Stéphanie Chouinard

Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada and at Queen's University. Her Research interests focus on the relationship between courts and minorities in democratic systems.

Holly Ann Garnett

Associate Professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada. Her research examines how electoral integrity can be strengthened throughout the electoral cycle. She is a co-convener of the Electoral Management Network, and contributes to the Electoral Integrity Project.

Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant

Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University, and Director of the Canadian Opinion Research Archive. Her research focuses on Canadian politics, with interests in electoral politics, voting behaviour, news media and gender.

Kim Nossal

Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Studies and the Centre for International Defence Policy at Queen's University. He is the Author of a number of works on Canadian foreign and defence policy.

Event partners

Theme

Download the Workshop Agenda (PDF 1.6mb)

Download the full Workshop Programme (PDF 3.1mb)

A key issue scholars and government officials around the world are currently grappling with is that of enhancing the diversity of their countries’ armed forces. Very few, however, focus on a critically important aspect of this debate: the representation of those who, in many countries, cannot fully contribute to enhancing the diversity of their armed forces because of their status as immigrants or non-citizens. This topic is particularly important to today’s militaries because they need to find innovative ways to increase and diversify their recruitment pools in order to accomplish the double objective of meeting their current recruitment needs whilst also reflecting the diversity of the populations they serve. This workshop brought together researchers from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States who will discuss the different experiences of various militaries around the world as they attempt to meet these two objectives simultaneously.

In particular, they discussed the nature of existing barriers as well as opportunities to immigrants/non-citizens’ full participation in the armed forces by drawing comparisons across countries, identifying common challenges and opportunities, sharing best practices, and providing evidence-based recommendations. This workshop’s most important contribution to the debate focussed on how to increase the diversity of militaries around the world consists in its central claim that the participation and integration of immigrants/non-citizens in the armed forces is morally and strategically imperative, and contributes to the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion in defence organizations.

Presentations

Keynotes

Expanding the Considerations of Immigrants and Military:  Al Okros, Royal Military College of Canada; Dallaire Centre of Excellence for Peace and Security, Canadian Defence Academy.

From Integration to Inclusion: Key to Successful Culture Change:  Major-General Lise Bourgon, Canadian Armed Forces; CIDP 2020-21 Visiting Defence Fellow

Panels

Panel 1 - Representation: A Military that Reflects the Society it Serves

• Fighting for Your Host country: A Look at Non-citizen Soldiers in Belgium [PDF 616kb]: Delphine Resteigne, Royal Military Academy, Brussels; University of Mons, Belgium. 
• The Swiss Armed Forces' Reputation and Its Integration Function for Recruits with Migration Backgrounds [PDF 1.1mb]: Stefano De Rosa, Military Academy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland and Tibor Szvircsev Tresch, Military Academy at ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Whose Military Is It Anyway? Transforming the Australian Defence Force into Australia’s Defence Force [PDF 1.7mb]: Jarrod Pendlebury, University of Sydney, Australia. 

Panel 2 - Motivators to Non-citizen Military Participation

• In Defence of Diversity: Immigrant Inclusion in the US Military as a Strategic Imperative [PDF 1.6mb]: Emerald M. Archer, Mount St. Mary’s University, California, US 
• Gym Warriors: Motivations and Barriers to Second Generation Immigrants for Enlisting in the Dutch Armed Forces [PDF 322kb]: René Moelker, Netherlands Defense Academy and Lema Salah, Netherlands Defense Academy; Radboud University, Nijme-gen, the Netherlands, 

Panel 3 - Equity, Diversity, Inclusion: Benefits and Imperatives to Non-citizen Military Participation

• The Military as a Path to Citizenship, Integration and Identity: Visible Minorities and Immigrants' Perspectives about the the Military in Canada [PDF 1.6mb]: Grazia Scoppio, Royal Military College of Canada; Nancy Otis, DGMPRA, Department of National Defence Canada; Yan (Lizzie) Yan, Queen's University
• Nationalism and Absence of Immigrants in the Brazilian Armed Forces [PDF 250kb]: Maria Celina D'Araujo, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Panel 4 - Roadblocks: Barriers to Non-citizen Recruitment and Retention in the Armed Forces

• Children of Migrant Workers in Military Service: Cross-sectional comparison in the Israel Defense Force [PDF 1.5mb]: Uzi Ben-Shalom, Ariel University, Israel; Deny Babis, Ariel University; Galia Sabar, Tel Aviv University, Israel; Anabel Lifszyc Friedlander, Gordon College, Israel and Tel Aviv University; Corinne Berger, Ariel University
• International Perspectives from India, Norway and Poland on Imigrant Intake in the Military [PDF 1.3mb]: Samir Rawat, Military MIND Academy, India; Andrzej Piotrowski, University of Gdańsk, Poland; Ole Boe, Bjørknes University College, Norway; Shradha Sharma, Military MIND Academy 
• Caught in Between the Progressive and the Traditional: The Swedish Military Managing Diversity [VIDEO]: Arita Holmberg, Swedish Defense University; Beatrice Pahv, Swedish Defense University