Christopher Sands

Christopher Sands is a Senior Research Professor and Director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a graduate division of Johns Hopkins University.

Previously, he taught as the G. Robert Ross Distinguished Visiting Professor in the College of Business and Economics at Western Washington University (2012-20170 and as an adjunct professor at the American University School of Public Affairs (2005-2012).

Dr. Sands began his career as a policy research scholar, and is a nonresident Senior Associate of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) the Washington think tank where he was a resident specialist on Canadian affairs from 1993 until 2002. He is also an associate member of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) in London. Previously, Sands was a Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute (2007-2016) and Director for Strategic Planning and Program Evaluation for the International Republican Institute (2002-2007) a core institute of the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. His policy research has been published by think tanks in Canada and the United States including the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Fraser Institute, the Institute for Research on Public Policy, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, the Migration Policy Institute and the Woodrow Wilson Center. He is a member of the board of the Canada – United States Law Institute, a joint venture of the law schools of Case Western Reserve University and the University of Western Ontario.

Dr. Sands was elected in 2017 to a two-year term as a member of the executive council of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, and he is a member of the American Political Science Association (where he served as treasurer and a member of the executive of the Canadian Politics Group from 2010 until 2017) and the International Studies Association. Sands earned a B.A. in political science from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota inn 1989, and his M.A. in international economics (1994) and Ph.D. in international relations and Canadian Studies (2009) from Johns Hopkins.