Thomas Homer-Dixon

Thomas Homer-Dixon (born 1956 in Victoria, British Columbia) currently holds the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario. He is a founding director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, at the University of Waterloo, and professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment, with a cross-appointment to the Political Science Department in the Faculty of Arts. He was previously director of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, a division of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

Homer-Dixon was raised in a rural area outside Victoria, British Columbia. In his late teens and early twenties, he gained first-hand knowledge of Canada’s oil industry while working as a roughneck on oil rigs, a labourer in gas refineries, and a welder’s helper on pipeline construction. In 1980, he received a B.A. in political science from Carleton University in Ottawa. He then established the Canadian Student Pugwash organization, a forum for discussion of economics, political science, history, and public policy. He completed his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989.

Homer-Dixon began his teaching career at the University of Toronto in 1990 to lead several research projects examining links between environmental stress and violence in poor countries. In 1993, he joined the faculty of University College and the Department of Political Science, progressing to full professor status in 2006. During this time, he was director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University College, moving on to be the Director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies until 2007. In 2008, Homer-Dixon moved to the University of Waterloo, Ontario, to assume the role as the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the newly created Balsillie School of International Affairs.

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