Thomas Homer-Dixon is founder and Executive Director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia. Born in Victoria, he received his BA in political science from Carleton University and, in 1989, his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in international relations, defense policy, and conflict theory. For nearly two decades, he directed the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto; in 2008 he joined the faculty at the University of Waterloo, where he founded the Waterloo Institute for complexity and Innovation and held a University Research Chair until 2022. Called by the Guardian “one of the best-informed and most brilliant writers on global affairs today,” he is considered among the world’s leading experts on the intricate links between nature, technology, and society.
Thomas writes regularly for the Globe and Mail and has published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Scientific American, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times. A bestselling author, his award-winning books include Environment, Scarcity, and Violence; The Ingenuity Gap; and The Upside of Down. His latest book, Commanding Hope, was published by Knopf Canada in 2020.