Emily (Millie) Hannan is a PhD candidate in the Global Governance program at the BSIA through Wilfrid Laurier University, specializing in Global Social Governance. Her research hopes to analyze climate change as a threat multiplier as it pertains to forced migration while critically exploring exclusionary border practices and discourses. Millie is driven by a commitment to environmental and social justice. Her work engages with the structures of international humanitarianism, migrant and refugee studies, multilateral governance, and the politics of precarity from theoretical and practical lenses. At the core of her research and passions, Millie often looks at local and global perspectives toward the future, finding new theorizations of peace, justice, and sustainability that prioritize people and the planet.
Millie’s academic background includes an MA degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory. When graduating in 2023, she received an award for Outstanding Graduate Work and a nomination for the Academic Excellence Gold Medal. In her Major Research Project, Millie researched the biopolitical dynamics informing the ‘architectures’ of the international humanitarian system and its approaches to the 2016 localization agenda. In 2022, Millie graduated with an Honours BA in Global Studies, with a concentration in Peace and Conflict studies, and a minor in Philosophy, also from Wilfrid Laurier University.
Throughout her Academic career, Millie worked as an instructional assistant and then as a Graduate Teaching Assistant with the Global Studies department. She has also worked with Laurier’s International Students Overcoming War organization in 2022, developing course curricula for incoming international students. In 2024/25 Millie held the Blumenfeld Junior Research Fellowship with Science for Peace, an NGO dedicated to research and education around human security, peace, and non-violence at the University of Toronto. Following the fellowship, Millie is now a board member and brand manager within the organization. Beyond this, Millie worked for a government funded CANCODE project and travelled across Northwestern Canada in 2024, facilitating robotics and coding workshops in diverse Indigenous communities.
In her personal life, Millie is an avid traveler, hiker, and reader, enjoying time with friends and family outdoors, and exploring new places and ideas.