Hannah Wyile is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Global Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University. Dr. Wyile holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Ottawa. She teaches courses in Canadian politics.
Dr. Wyile’s research sits at the intersection of Canadian politics and political theory, focusing on discourses, theories, and practices of political reconciliation and on the history of constitutional politics in Canada. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Canadian Studies, the Journal of Canadian Studies, Review of Constitutional Studies, and Studies in Canadian Literature.
Dr. Wyile’s current research program involves two sets of projects.
The first focuses on discourses of reconciliation. The centerpiece of this is a monograph on the genealogy of discourses of reconciliation in constitutional politics in Canada entitled The Rise of Reconciliation: Diverging Discourses and Constitutional Politics in Canada. Dr. Wyile is also working on a project on emergent discourses of “economic reconciliation” and developing future research on the concept of “transformative reconciliation.”
The second part of Dr. Wyile’s research program stems from a SSHRC-funded project she is involved with entitled “Shining Light on the ‘Blackout Period’ in Aboriginal Law,” led by principal investigator Dr. Amy Swiffen at Concordia University. This project is investigating the creation, implementation, and effects of Section 141 of the Indian Act, which was in force from 1927 to 1951 and prevented Indigenous peoples from raising funds to pursue legal claims. Dr. Wyile is collaborating with other researchers on the project on manuscripts on the origins and implementation of Section 141 and developing a program of archival research that will investigate the history of this law in the Maritimes and explore how it intersected with other federal and provincial policies towards the L’nu’k and Wolastoqiyik.
Dr. Wyile’s research interests center broadly on questions of political community and the structures and processes that shape how diverse peoples live together on shared yet contested land. Her work explores these questions at the intersection of constitutional politics and law, identity politics, political and policy discourses, historical injustice and redress, multinational democracy, settler colonialism, and federalism. Within all her projects, she is particularly interested in uncovering the genealogy of contemporary relations of power and in attending to historical context, nuance, and complexity in order to understand how they shape the present and possibilities for social and political change.
PhD, Political Science, University of Ottawa (2023)
MA, Political Science, University of Victoria (2014)
BA (Hons), Human Rights and Political Science with a concentration in International Relations, Carleton University (2011)