Paul Evans (PhD with distinction Dalhousie University 1982) retired from UBC in June 2023 after 43 years of university teaching. He is currently Professor Emeritus.

His academic appointments have been as follows:

• Assistant Professor, Acadia University, 1980-81
• Assistant, Associate and Professor, Department of Political Science, York University, 1981-97;
• Director, University of Toronto – York University Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, 1991-96;
• Visiting Professor, Asia Center, Harvard University, 1997-99;
• Acting Director, Liu Institute for Global Issues, 2004-5;
• Director, Institute of Asian Research, 2008-11;
• Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong, 2011 and 2013;
• Visiting Professor and Head of the International Academic Advisory Panel to the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, 2013-16.

Between 2005 and 2008, he was seconded from UBC to serve as the Co-CEO and Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. And between 2020 and 2023 he held the HSBC Chair in Asian Research at UBC.

A regionalist rather than country specialist, he has held visiting fellowships at the Australian National University (1988); National Chengchi University in Taiwan (1989); Chulalongkorn University (1989); the East-West Center (1995); and the National Institute for Research Advancement in Tokyo (1999) and spoken at more than fifty universities and think tanks across the region.

An advocate of cooperative and human security, he has been studying and promoting policy-related activity on track-two security processes and the construction of multilateral institutions since 1988.  He was a co-founder of the Council for Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific (CSCAP), the Canadian Consortium on Human Security, and the co-founder of the Canada-Korea Forum.  He has directed exchange and partnership projects with fifteen research institutes in Asia and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded by governments and foundations in Canada, Japan, the United States, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia.  Between 1990 and 2002 he organized two dozen meetings involving participants from North Korea.

He is currently a Canadian representative on the ASEAN Regional Forum’s Experts and Eminent Persons Group.

A member of the Global Council of the Asia Society in New York, he also sits on the editorial boards of The Pacific Review, the Chinese Journal of International Politics, the China Quarterly for International Strategic Studies, and Mexico y la Cuenca del Pacifico.

His graduate and undergraduate teaching at UBC focused on Global China and World Order.

The author or editor of seven books, his first was a biography of John Fairbank, his most popular the two editions of a lexicon of Asia Pacific security terminology (with David Capie), and his most recent “Engaging China: Myth, Aspiration and Strategy in Canadian Policy from Trudeau to Harper,” published in 2014.

His recent writings and media commentaries have focused on Canada-China relations, Asian security dynamics, and the emergence of techno-nationalism as a defining force in regional affairs.  Some of them are available here and on his blog. His condensed academic CV is available here, and his complete academic CV is available here.

He is married to Catherine Evans and they plan to remain resident in Vancouver.

His retirement message to the UBC community can be viewed below: