Fellows
Senior Research Fellows
We are fortunate to have strong academic colleagues who partner with us in the work we do, and whose research agendas align with our own.
Dr. David Hofmann
Dr. David C. Hofmann is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Program at the University of New Brunswick Fredericton Campus. He is a nationally-recognized expert on far-right extremism and violence, and has extensive experience conducting funded research in this area with governmental partners such as Public Safety Canada, National Defense, and Defense Research and Development Canada. David’s current research interests are focused on five broad areas: terrorism and political violence, charismatic leadership, right-wing extremism, apocalyptical and millenarian groups, and criminal & illicit networks. David is a mixed methodologist, with a particular interest in social network analysis.
Junior Research Fellows
Graduate students and Post-Doctoral Fellows are crucial to our work. They support our research and community outreach, while also making meaningful scholarly contributions in their own right.
Dr. Amy Mack
Dr. Amy Mack (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of New Media at the University of Lethbridge. She is the co-founder of the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies where she acts as Co-Director of Research and leads their fellowship and mentorship programs. Trained as an anthropologist and ethnographer, her work explores how anti-democratic reactionary movements use social media to perpetuate hate, bias, and extremism. She advocates for community-based approaches to countering hate and promoting social cohesion in rural communities and provides evidence-based recommendations to policy makers, educators, and practitioners.
Dr. Carmen Celestini
Dr. Carmen Celestini is currently a sessional lecturer at the University of Waterloo in the Religious Studies Department. Having completed her PhD at the same university, she then became a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism. Following this fellowship, she completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Disinformation Project at Simon Fraser University and then a Postdoctoral Fellow position at Queen’s University School of Religion. She was a co-author of The Canadian Far-Right and Conspiracy Theories as well as numerous pieces in both academic journals and anthology collections. She is also the author of God’s Angry Men: The Political Legacy of the John Birch Society, a book that follows the Society from its beginnings in the 1950s to its impact on the Heritage Foundation and the Council on National Policy. In late 2026 her third book Constructed Victimhood: A Pathway to Mainstreaming Hate on Social Media investigates the use of victimhood by white, Christian men in Canada to validate hate speech, Christian nationalism, and populism in Canada. Her areas of research include the overlapping belief systems of religion and conspiracy theories and how these beliefs impact politics in North America, extremism, hate, bias, disinformation, and religious-political social movements in online and offline environments. She has appeared on CNN, NPR, and in the pages of the New York Times and numerous Canadian news broadcasts and print media, including the CBC, Global News, TVO, and The Toronto Star.
Dr. Panagiotis (Peter) Milonas
Dr. Panagiotis Peter Milonas is a Sessional Lecturer in the Communications and Digital Media Studies (CDMS) program at Ontario Tech University. He is a scholar specializing in mass media, political economy, and far-right politics. He holds a PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University and has an interdisciplinary background that includes political science, social theory, and journalism.
His research explores how mainstream media systems influence ideological bias and contribute to the rise of far-right movements. His recent book, Capitalism’s Safety Net: News Media and the Far-Right (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), examines this critical issue.
In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Milonas is an experienced broadcast journalist based in Toronto, contributing to both television and radio programs. His work effectively bridges theory and practice, positioning him well to contribute to a research center focused on analyzing hate, bias, and extremism, as well as the broader dynamics influencing contemporary political communication.
Honorary Fellows
We recognize the support and guidance of colleagues in the community, people who have helped us to achieve our goals of deepening our understanding of hate, bias and extremism, and putting that understanding to work to make change in our communities.
Kevin Chan
Kevin Chan is a Senior Director at Meta, focusing on the future of the internet including artificial intelligence, the metaverse and the creator economy. A former government executive and university administrator, he launched Facebook’s Canadian policy function and spent 7 years as its Head and then Director of Policy. Kevin has driven impact in areas as diverse as platform integrity and the promotion of Indigenous languages online. His work fighting white nationalists made NOW Magazine’s 2019 Year In Review, and his efforts leading Facebook's Canadian Election Integrity Initiative in 2019 and 2021 were recognized with a Harvard Technology and Democracy Fellowship. In 2023, UNESCO named his effort translating Facebook into Inuktitut an initiative of “digital empowerment driving the International Decade of Indigenous Languages”, and he recently helped launch a UNESCO language translator powered by Meta's No Language Left Behind AI model to help support and promote low resource languages. In 2024, Kevin was elected Chair of the Board of MediaSmarts, Canada’s digital literacy centre. A Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, he was awarded the Quest Medal in 2025 for contributions to the discovery of Quest, Shackleton’s last ship, and laying the groundwork for digital immersive experiences that explore this discovery.
Stephen Camp
Stephen holds a Master of Arts in Justice Studies from Royal Roads University, where his research focused on hate crimes and violent extremism, as well as a Bachelor of Arts (Specialization) in Sociology from the University of Alberta. He is a recognized specialist in hate crime who has collaborated extensively with government, academia, civil society, non-governmental organizations, and law enforcement agencies to enhance institutional and community responses to hate crime and violent extremism. He currently serves as the Project Director for the Hate Crime Centre at the Organization for the Prevention of Violence.
Stephen has developed and co-developed a wide range of hate crime training programmes and educational modules for numerous organizations across sectors. He provides guidance and leadership to local, provincial, and federal governments, police services, and non-governmental organizations on the development of strategies, policies, legislative reforms, competencies, and capacity building to strengthen hate crime responses.
Over the course of a distinguished thirty-year career with the Edmonton Police Service, Stephen retired at the rank of Staff Sergeant. He co-founded the Edmonton Police Service Chief’s Community Council and Hate Crime Unit, as well as the Alberta Hate Crimes Committee (now known as StopHateAb).
Visiting Fellows
We welcome our colleagues from across the country and across the globe who share our commitment to scholarship and teaching that aims to challenge hate, bias and extremism in all areas. Stay with us for a week or for a few months! Please contact Dr. Perry to discuss the possibilities, and learn more about Ontario Tech’s application process for visiting scholars.
Dr. Mark Walters
