Allan Thompson

Notable work and positions

School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University - Professor
Toronto Star - former reporter and columnist (1987-2012)
Rwanda Initiative - Founder and Co-director

Biography

Allan Thompson is a professor at Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication in Ottawa and a former political reporter for the Toronto Star, where he worked for 17 years, including a decade in the paper's Parliament Hill bureau covering foreign affairs, defence and immigration. A graduate of Carleton's Bachelor of Journalism program, he joined the university's faculty in 2003 and founded the Rwanda Initiative, a media capacity-building partnership between Carleton and Rwanda's National University that sent more than 125 Canadian journalists to teach in Rwanda over its five-year run. He edited the collection The Media and the Rwanda Genocide (2007) and, more recently, Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond (CIGI Press), and co-authored the journalism textbook The Canadian Reporter: News Writing and Reporting. Thompson continued to freelance for the Toronto Star as an immigration columnist until 2012 and is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.