The faculty, students, and staff in the Department of Political Science are proud to celebrate the remarkable career of Dr. Allen Sens, who will retire after 33 years at UBC.
Dr. Allen Sens began his association with UBC as a young child, frequently visiting the original Brock Hall building with his father, who, as a sessional instructor, taught the course on animated filmmaking in what is now the Department of Theatre and Film from 1973 to 1985. Dr. Sens began attending UBC as an undergraduate student in 1982, graduating with a Political Science Major in 1986. Dr. Sens was then admitted into the MA Program in Political Science, graduating in 1988. He completed his PhD in Political Science at Queen’s University in 1993.
Dr. Sens returned to UBC as a postdoc at the Centre for International Relations from 1993 to 1995. He was employed as a sessional instructor in the Department of Political Science from 1995 to 1998 before being appointed as a Sessional Instructor with tenure in 1999. From 1999 to 2009, Dr. Sens was the Chair of the International Relations Program, beginning a long association that continues to this day. In 2013, Dr. Sens was promoted to the new UBC rank of Professor of Teaching, the first in the Faculty of Arts.
Over his career, Dr. Sens has taught and co-taught courses in international relations, including armed conflict and conflict management, nuclear weapons and arms control, Canadian foreign and defence policy, international peacekeeping, European security, climate change and genomics — and the perennially popular “Introduction to Global Politics”. His teaching was collaborative, multidisciplinary and pedagogically innovative. For decades he has set the standard for compassionate, creative and rigorous instruction in the department.
Outside of the classroom, Dr. Sens coordinated The Terry Project’s global speaker series, served as a consultant to government projects on Peace Operations and NATO enlargement and was the Principal Investigator on two SSHRC-funded projects on knowledge mobilization through long-form radio podcasting. A trusted voice on international security, he has regularly shared his expertise with media and government on issues from NATO to the war in Ukraine.
Dr. Sens filled important roles in the Faculty of Arts over his career. In addition to his long stewardship of the International Relations program, he also chaired the Faculty of Arts Curriculum Committee (2011-14) and served as Assistant Dean of Student Services (2010-11). He served as Special Advisor to the Provost and VP Students for Enriched Educational Experiences (2011-12). His teaching has also been recognized with the UBC Killam Teaching Prize (2003), the Canadian Political Science Association Prize for Teaching Excellence (2018), two UBC AMS Just Desserts Awards, and the UBC Open Education Resource Champion Award.
We thank Dr. Sens for his decades of dedication to students and to the study of international relations at UBC, and wish him a wonderful retirement.
