Patrick is completing his DPhil in International Relations at Oxford University, where he is working on various ideas related to the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P)—a concept often associated with the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) and sponsored by the Canadian government during the Lloyd Axworthy and Jean Chrétien years.
Before starting his doctorate, Patrick completed a BA in International Relations at the University of Toronto and an MPhil in International Relations at St Antony’s College, Oxford. It was at Toronto that he was first introduced to R2P, which led to among other things, a research project supervised by Michael Ignatieff (one of two Canadian members of the ICISS in 2000-2001) and a job with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect in New York City. Engagement with Brazil’s ‘Responsibility while Protecting’ proposal, introduced in 2011, soon marked his transition from activist to critical analyst.
Today Patrick’s relationship with R2P is complex. His research focuses on cross-cultural understandings of intervention among states, and particularly among groups of states sometimes sorted into categories like the ‘Global South’ or ‘Third World’. While he is writing a history of international contestation and dissent that stretches back to the founding of the United Nations in 1945, much of his work is really about the present: about how to re-invent the idea of international humanitarian protection at a time of crisis and transition.
Appearing in the Review of International Studies, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association, Patrick’s most recent article is titled ‘The South, the West, and the Meanings of Humanitarian Intervention in History‘. As a ‘timely provocation’ and ‘counterhistory’, the article tries to challenge the way in which scholars have framed the sovereignty-intervention debate and located its origins and values. In general Patrick’s current research is concerned with the ‘North-South’ dimension of international politics and global order.
As Junior College Lecturer at University College, recently Patrick has been teaching courses to undergraduates enrolled in Oxford’s Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) and History and Politics programmes. He served as Managing Editor of the St Antony’s International Review and in 2019 co-edited a special issue of International Affairs commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Paris Peace Conference. In 2021 Patrick will take up a postdoctoral fellowship at the National University of Singapore where he plans to work on a book manuscript based on his doctoral research and on other projects related to international conflict resolution and regional identities.
Patrick has been lauded for both his academic and extracurricular contributions—the CCSF Committee was deeply impressed by this powerful combination and by his steadfast optimism and character. We have been proud to support Patrick with the 2019 Veterans’ Support Committee Scholarship and look forward to witnessing his positive impact on world politics as an exceptionally talented Canadian.
Updated January 2021
