Veronica Kitchen is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs. She is a scholar of global politics and critical security studies, with particular interests in Canadian national security, the pedagogy of global politics, and heroism and global politics. 

Her recent publications include Multilayered but Not Coordinated: National Security Policing in Canada after 9/11 in The Legacy of 9/11 and “North America” (eds. Andrea Charron, Alex Moens & Stéphane Roussel (McGill-Queen’s, 2023),  The Twitter Conference as a New Medium of Scholarly Communication (and How to Host One) (with Tanya Bandula-Irwin; PS: Political Science & Politics, 2022), Using Games and Simulations to Scaffold Experiential Learning in Global Politics (Journal of Political Science Education, 2021), and Heroism and Global Politics (Routledge, 2018; edited with Jenny Mathers). She has also published extensively on security co-operation, mega-event security, Canadian-American security relations, and transatlantic security relations. 

From 2012-2023, Kitchen was an executive member of the Canadian Network for Terrorism, Security, and Society, serving as Acting Director from 2018-2019, and Co-Director from 2020-2023. She has also co-led the Conflict & Security Research Cluster at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (2012-2016, 2020-2024) and was the co-lead of the North America research group for the Defence & Security Foresight Group, funded under the Department of National Defence’s MINDS program. She is a career-long member of Women in International Security and serves on the editorial board of International Journal. 

Prior to joining the University of Waterloo, Kitchen was a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre of International Relations at the University of British Columbia. She completed her PhD in political science at Brown University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. She has an undergraduate degree in International Relations from Trinity College at the University of Toronto.

Outside of work, Kitchen is a sewist and a knitter; a paddler and sailor; a Guider; and a fiction reader.

Current Projects

Gender and National Security: Funded by SSHRC and the Department of National Defence, this project with Dr. Tanya Narozhna studies the integration of the GBA+ framework in the Department of Public Safety and its associated agencies, using the lens of feminist security studies. 

Heroism and COVID 19. Together with Dr. Jenny Mathers this project builds on our work on heroism and global politics to understand how narratives of heroism functioned to build or destroy political community during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Foresight Analysis and Pedagogy. This project develops a method for using foresight analysis to teach about the future of global politics in undergraduate classrooms.

For a full list of publications and activity please see Dr. Kitchen’s Curriculum Vitae