Thomas F. Homer-Dixon

Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada. He is a Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo with a cross-appointment to the Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Arts.

He received a BA in Political Science from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1981 and a PhD in Political Science from MIT in 1989. At MIT he studied international relations, defense and arms control policy, philosophy of science, cognitive science, and conflict theory. Subsequently, he moved to the University of Toronto to lead several pioneering research projects examining the links between environmental stress and violence in developing countries.

Recently, his research has focused on threats to global security in the 21st century (including climate change and energy scarcity) and on how societies innovate in response to complex economic, ecological, and technological change. His work is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on political science, economics, environmental studies, geography, cognitive science, social psychology, and complex systems theory.