Caroline is a scholar of global governance and multilateralism.
About Me
I am a Senior Researcher on the Global Governance Innovation Platform at the United Nations University Center for Policy Research. I am also a Fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s University.
Prior to my current appointments, I was the Skelton-Clark Post-Doctoral Fellow in Canadian Affairs at Queen’s University. I completed my PhD in Political Science at the University of Ottawa, where I was also a research associate at the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS).
I hold an MA in Political Science from The George Washington University, an MA in Public and International Affairs from the University of Ottawa, and a Bachelor of Knowledge Integration from the University of Waterloo. I have worked at Global Affairs Canada in multiple roles since 2015, including as the 2018-2019 Cadieux-Léger Fellow.
At Queen’s, I taught POLS 496: Canada and the United Nations and POLS 212: Canadian Politics in 2025. In 2024, I taught POLS 392: Canadian Foreign Policy and POLS 496: Canada and the United Nations.
I taught POL 4330: Honours Seminar in International Relations and Global Politics at the University of Ottawa as well as a course at the University of Ottawa’s Enrichment Mini Courses Program titled Diplomacy, Statecraft, and Foreign Affairs.
I live in Brooklyn, NY with my husband and dog.
Published Work
Journal Articles
“What Can a Small State Do? The Importance of Political Investment in the United Nations and International Law. The Martello Papers 49, (February 2025): 5-20.
“Canada and the United Nations at Political Turning Point”. International Journal 79, no. 4 (December 2024): 629-641.
Caroline Dunton, Marion Laurence, and Gino Vlavonou. “Pragmatic Peacekeeping in a Multipolar Era: Liberal Norms, Practices and the Future of UN Peace Operations”. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 17, no. 3 (May 2023): 215-234.
Liam Midzain-Gobin, Caroline Dunton, and Robert Tay-Burroughs. “Provincial-Indigenous Relationships as Diplomatic Encounters?” IRPP Insight 47. Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation (July 2023): 1-24.
Michael Murphy, Andrew Heffernan, Caroline Dunton, and Amelia Arsenault. “The Disciplinary Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Political Science and International Relations: Methods, Topics, and Impact”. International Politics 60, no. 5 (January 2023): 1030-1048.
Caroline Dunton and Jack Hasler. “Opening the Black Box of International Aid: Understanding Delivery Actors and Democratization.” International Politics 58, no. 5 (October 2021): 792-815.
Liam Midzain-Gobin and Caroline Dunton. “Renewing Relationships? Solitudes, Decolonization, and Feminist International Policy.” Millennium Journal of International Studies 50, no. 1 (September 2021): 29-54.
Caroline Dunton. Willing to Serve: Empire, Status, and Canadian Campaigns to the United Nations Security Council (1946-1947)”. International Journal 75, no. 4 (December 2020): 529-547.
Caroline Dunton and Veronica Kitchen. "Paradiplomatic Policing and Relocating Canadian Foreign Policy" International Journal 69, no. 2 (June 2014): 183-197.
Other Articles
« Le Pacte de l’avenir et la possibilité de la réforme du Conseil de Sécurité » Bulletin FrancoPaix (Centre FrancoPaix) December 2, 2024.
“Book Review: Blue Helmet Bureaucrats: United Nations Peacekeeping and the Reinvention of Colonialism, 1945–1971”. International Journal 78, no. 4 (December 2023): 657-660.
Anjali Dayal and Caroline Dunton. “The U.N. Security Council Was Designed for Deadlock — Can it Change?” United States Institute of Peace. March 1, 2023.
“Book Review: Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions” Small States & Territories Journal 5, no. 2 (November 2022): 337-339.
“UNSC Reform: A future possibility or a distant memory?” Centre for International Policy Studies Blog. October 17, 2022.
“This federal election, think about which party wants to build a stronger foreign service”. The Conversation (Canada), September 16, 2021. Also available via the CIPS blog.
Caroline Dunton, Marion Laurence, and Gino Vlavonou. “Action for Peacekeeping? Middle Powers, Liberal Internationalism, and the Future of UN Peace Operations.” Centre for International Policy Studies Blog, September 13, 2021.
Robert Tay-Burroughs, Liam Midzain-Gobin, and Caroline Dunton. ‘Shifting the Relationship between Provinces and First Nations to a Diplomatic Focus’. Policy Options, 17 August 2021.
“Can Canada Win a UN Security Council Seat?” Centre for International Policy Studies Blog, June 15, 2020
“Canada and the United Nations Security Council: A primer on the upcoming election” Canadian International Development Platform, June 14, 2020.
“Review Essay: Making Liberal Internationalism Great Again?” H-Diplo, March 27, 2020.
“Revisiting Responsibility in International Relations: Accountability, Practice, and Canadian Foreign Policy.” E-International Relations, September 18, 2017.
Commentary
You can find my analysis of Canada’s 2020 UNSC campaign on The Boys in Short Pants podcast and the Open to Debate podcast.
Book Project
My book manuscript-in-progress is titled To Play Our Full Part: The Pursuit of Status at the United Nations Security Council. In this book, I examine how liberal international order is entangled with imperialism by telling the story of elections to the UNSC. Elections are a recurring and important political process in the UN system. In this book, I frame election to a non-permanent seat as a form of status-seeking: in this case, states pursue membership in an exclusive and hierarchical club.
To do this analysis, I contextualize the UNSC as not just a key locus of authority within international order, but also as co-constituted with order, at the nexus of liberal internationalism and imperialism. In doing so, I examine Canada’s 9 campaigns to the Council from 1946 to 2020, capturing a unique, empirical case of a state that historically bridges the P5 and the “rest”. I argue that the intersection between liberal internationalism and imperialism frames how states understand the mandate and responsibilities of the UNSC, envision their role on it, and therefore construct their campaigns in ways that may uphold or challenge existing order. Through a pragmatic analysis of both discourse and practice, I elaborate the claim that status-seeking in the UNSC context occurs wherein states articulate their relationship to the responsibilities and mandate of the Security Council which is, in practice, an articulation of their relationship to liberal internationalism and imperialism, as they make up order.
