Randall Hansen

Randall Hansen
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of British Columbia (BA)
St. John's College, Oxford (MPhil)
Nuffield College, Oxford (DPhil)
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Toronto
Main interestsMigration, eugenics, war and civilian populations
Notable worksFire and Fury, Disobeying Hitler

Randall Hansen is a Canadian political scientist and historian at the University of Toronto, where he holds a Canada Research Chair in Global Migration in the Department of Political Science. He is also Director of the Global Migration Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Hansen taught at the Queen Mary University of London and the University of Oxford (where he was a tutorial fellow at Merton College) before taking up his current position.

His fields of research are migration and citizenship, eugenics and population policy, and the effect of war on civilian populations. He has authored four books, Citizenship and Immigration in Postwar Britain,[1] Fire and Fury: the Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945,[2][3] Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance after Valkyrie.,[4] and War, Work and Want: How the OPEC Oil Crisis Caused Mass Migration and Revolution [5]

Hansen was co-editor (with Matthew J. Gibney) of Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present.[6] He is co-author (with Desmond King) of Sterilized by the State: Eugenics, Race and the Population Scare in 20th Century North America.[7]

Fire and Fury was a Canadian bestseller, described by Vice as "well-received," and was nominated for a Governor's General award,[8] specifically the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2009.[9] Additionally, he has contributed numerous articles to academic journals.

In 2018, sales of Fire and Fury surged upon the publication of Michael Wolff's best-selling book of the same title about the Presidency of Donald Trump.[10] Some people bought Hansen's book by mistake, while others became aware of it because of the publicity over the Wolff book. The Guardian reported Hansen's reaction to the interest in his book about the consequences of war:

"And we’re talking about that at a moment when we have this warmongering, unstable, deranged demagogue in the White House," he said. "So that coincidence actually makes me happier than the sales."[11]

Hansen was the Interim Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs for the period 1 June 2017 to 31 January 2020, succeeding Stephen Toope,[12] and Director of the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School from 2011 to 2022.[13]

  1. ^ Hansen, Randall (2000). Citizenship and Immigration in Postwar Britain. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198297093. OCLC 43419152. Also ISBN 9780199240548.
  2. ^ Philip O Ceallaigh (8 February 2020). "Fire and Fury – the Allied Bombing of Germany and Japan: and Dresden – the Fire and the Darkness". www.irishtimes.com. The Irish Times. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  3. ^ Hansen, Randall (2008). Fire and Fury: the Allied Bombing of Germany 1942–1945. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. ISBN 9780451227591. OCLC 268795501.
  4. ^ Hansen, Randall (2014). Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance after Valkyrie. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199927920. OCLC 885970110.
  5. ^ https://global.oup.com/academic/product/war-work-and-want-9780197657690 [bare URL]
  6. ^ Gibney, Matthew J; Hansen, Randall (2005). Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781849723305. OCLC 941857240.
  7. ^ Hansen, Randall; King, Desmond S (2013). Sterilized by the State: Eugenics, Race and the Population Scare in 20th Century North America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139507554. OCLC 945695452.
  8. ^ Lamoureux, Mack (9 January 2018). "People Are Buying the Wrong 'Fire and Fury' Book". www.vice.com. Vice. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  9. ^ "Cumulative list of finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards" (PDF). Governor General’s Literary Awards. p. 81. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  10. ^ The Guardian (11 January 2018). "'Are people that dumb?': Canadian professor's decade-old military history, 'Fire and Fury', is an unexpected bestseller". www.scmp.com. South China Morning Post. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  11. ^ Kassam, Ashifa (9 January 2018). "The other Fire and Fury: decade-old book becomes unexpected bestseller". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
  12. ^ "Professor Randall Hansen appointed Interim Director of Munk School of Global Affairs". Munk School of Global Affairs. 19 April 2017. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
  13. ^ "Randall Hansen". Munk School of Global Affairs. Retrieved 1 May 2017.