Leah Sarson is an assistant professor of International Relations at Dalhousie University, where her work explores Indigenous global politics in the extractive resource sector. Her broader research interests focus on Canadian foreign policy, International Relations, gender, and the Arctic. Prior to joining Dalhousie, she was a Fulbright researcher and SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she remains a fellow at the Dickey Center for International Understanding and a visiting Arctic fellow at the Institute of Arctic Studies. She completed her PhD in Political Studies in December 2016 at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where she is also a fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy. Dr. Sarson holds additional positions at Dalhousie’s Centre for the Study of Security and Development, the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto and the Canadian International Council. She has also held professional positions at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and Global Affairs Canada, among others.
Dr. Sarson has been an active member of WIIS-Canada since 2014 and is president of the Toronto chapter of WIIS-Canada, which she co-founded with Dr. Aisha Ahmad. Her publications include a 2017 article in Études internationalesthat draws on her experiences organizing the 2015 WIIS-Canada annual workshop, a co-authored chapter in a forthcoming book celebrating ten years of WIIS-Canada, and several other publications exploring Canadian foreign policy. She is particularly committed to building the community of WIIS-Canada scholars, students, and practitioners and expanding the WIIS-Canada mentorship program.