BIOGRAPHY

Walter Dorn is a Professor of Defence Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) and the Canadian Forces College (CFC). He serves as Chair of the CFC's Department of Security and International Affairs.  In the past, he has served as co-chair of the CFC's Department of Security Studies and as Deputy Director for Outreach and Community Development. He is also Chair of Canadian Pugwash, an organization of physical, life and social scientists seeking to reduce the threats to global security.

Dr. Dorn is a scientist by training (Ph.D. Chemistry, Univ. of Toronto), whose doctoral research was aimed at chemical sensing for arms control. He assisted with the negotiation, ratification and implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) while working as a programme coordinator at Parliamentarians for Global Action (1992-93). He addressed parliamentary bodies on several continents and drafted a parliamentary declaration that was subsequently signed by more than one thousand parliamentarians.

His interests are now broader, covering both international and human security, especially the operations in the field to help secure them through peacekeeping and peace enforcement by the United Nations.

At the Canadian Forces College he teaches officers of rank Major to Brigadier from Canada and over 20 other countries in the areas of arms control, Canadian foreign/defence policy, peace operations and international security.

As an "operational professor," he seeks direct experience in field missions. In 1999, he served as a district electoral officer with the United Nations Mission in East Timor. He also served with the United Nations in Ethiopia (UNDP project), at UN headquarters as a Training Adviser and three times as a consultant with the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). He has carried out DPKO-sponsored research in conflict areas in Central and South America, Africa and South East Asia. In 2010, during a sabbatical, he was a Visiting Professional in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Since 1983, he has served as the UN Representative of Science for Peace, a Canadian NGO, and addressed the UN General Assembly in 1988 at the Second UN Special Session on Disarmament. In the United States, he was a Senior Research Fellow at Cornell University (Einaudi Centre for International Studies, 1998-2000), a consultant to UN Studies at Yale (1996), a visiting scholar at the Cooperative Monitoring Centre (Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico, 1999) and an adviser to the Federation of American Scientist (Biological Weapons Control expert group, 1990). At the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, he taught the course, "Live, Move and Work: Technology and Engineering in Modern Peacekeeping."

At the University of Toronto, he was a Research Fellow with the International Relations Programme and with the Peace and Conflict Studies Programme, and the Physical Science Don at Trinity College. In 2001/02 he was awarded the inaugural Human Security Fellowship (academic) by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).

He has recently finished writing a book titled "Keeping Watch: Monitoring, Technology, and Innovation in UN Peace Operations" and is hoping to finally complete a related book  on a broader theme, tentatively titled "The Emerging Global Watch: UN Monitoring for International Peace and Human Security." It will analyse the expansion of the monitoring of conflicts, sanctions, elections, human rights and global security generally.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Resumé (available upon request)
List of publications (html) (pdf) 
List of presentations (html) (pdf)

MISCELLANEOUS

Awards

Becoming a Peace Researcher: A Profile of Walter Dorn (1996)

Letter of commendation (pdf) from Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2003-2012)

Official portraits

Some personal experiences and thoughts (including poetry)

Google Scholar Profile

WEBSITES

Canadian Forces College
En: www.cfc.dnd.ca/Personnel/dorn_e.html
Fr: www.cfc.dnd.ca/Personnel/dorn_f.html

Royal Military College of Canada (RMCC)
En: www.rmcc.forces.gc.ca/aca/ds-ed/per/dor
Fr: www.cmrc.forces.gc.ca/aca/ds-ed/per/dor/index-fra.asp

Wikipedia

Professional: www.walterdorn.org

The current website was created after restrictive Treasury Board rules were imposed on Canadian government websites, which curtailed the posting of academic papers and publications.

Many thanks go to Lisa Plekhanova and Jamie Osborne for the design and upkeep of this site.

Search this site (or add term site:walterdorn.org to a Google search with other terms of your own)

CONTACT INFORMATION

Dr. Walter Dorn
Canadian Forces College
215 Yonge Blvd., Toronto ON 
M5M 3H9  Canada

Tel: 416-482-6800 x 6538;   Fax: 416-482-6802

E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it