Jeremy Kinsman

Life and career

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Kinsman graduated from Princeton University in 1963 and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris in 1965. He joined the Department of External Affairs in 1966. During his career, he was the Canadian ambassador to the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Italy, Albania, and the European Union. He was also the Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Malta. He resigned in 2006.

In 2007, he was named Diplomat-in-Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. The School partnered in the democracy support project Kinsman headed under the Community of Democracies that researched, and produced a field guide for democracy support, "A Diplomat's Handbook for Democracy Development Support", now in a Third Edition, published by CIGI (Centre for International Governance Innovation) in 2013. In 2009-2010 Kinsman was appointed Regents' Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and joined Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies as Resident International Scholar. Since 2011, he has been concurrently Distinguished Diplomatic Visitor at Ryerson University, Toronto. He has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Council of Justin Trudeau.

Kinsman is a regular contributor to print media and TV, notably as lead foreign affairs writer for Policy Magazine and for OpenCanada.org, the website shared by the Canadian International Council and CIGI.