Kenny William Ie, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, ON, Canada
Lecturer, Department of Political Science
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Email: kenny.ie@ubc.ca
Bluesky: @kennywilliamie.bsky.social
Research and Teaching Areas
Canadian Politics, Comparative Politics, Political Leadership, Executive Politics and Institutions, Political Representation and Diversity, Racialized Politics and Civic Engagement, Quantitative Research Methods
Education
Ph.D. University of Western Ontario (2018)
Canadian Politics, Comparative Politics
M.A. McGill University (2011)
Comparative Politics, Canadian Politics
B.A. Simon Fraser University (2008)
Political Science, Philosophy
Publications
Ie, K.W., K. Bird, J. Everitt, A. Wagner, & M. Lalancette. 2025. Ethnic Affinities and Civic Engagement: An Experimental Study of Chinese-Canadian Candidates and Voters. Forthcoming in Politics, Groups, and Identities.
Ie, K.W. 2024. Ministerial Policy Roles and Mandate Letters in the Justin Trudeau Government. Canadian Public Administration 67.1: 40-53. https://doi.org/10.1111/capa.12554
Ie, K.W. 2023. Ministerial Mandate Letters and Coordination in the Canadian Executive. Canadian Journal of Political Science 56.4: 811-831. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423923000598
Siklodi, N., K.W. Ie, & N. Allen. 2023. From gender equity to gendered assignments? Women and cabinet committees in Canada and the United Kingdom. Government & Opposition: 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2023.18
Ie, K.W. 2022. Cabinet Composition, Collegiality and Collectivity: Examining Patterns in Cabinet Committee Structure. European Political Science Review 14.1: 115-133. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773921000345
Ie, K.W. 2021. Representation and Ministerial Influence on Cabinet Committees in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science 54.3: 615-636. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842392100041X
Ie, K.W. 2020. Tweeting Power: The Communication of Leadership Roles on Prime Ministers’ Twitter. Politics and Governance 8.1: 158-170. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v8i1.2530
Ie, K.W. 2019. Cabinet Committees as Strategies of Prime Ministerial Leadership in Canada, 2003-2019. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 57.4: 466-486. https://doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2019.1668618
Work Completed / Under Review
Ie, K.W. Unequal by Design: Ministerial Policy Roles in the Canadian Executive, 2015-2021. Revised and resubmitted at Canadian Public Administration.
Allen, N., K.W. Ie, & N. Siklodi. Gender and the collegial face of executive politics: Priorities, presence, and power. Revised and resubmitted at Governance.
Everitt, J., K.W. Ie, K. Bird, A. Wagner, & M. Lalancette. Candidate Affinity and 2SLGBTQI+ Voter Turnout in Canada. Revised and resubmitted at Political Research Quarterly.
Ie, K.W., J. Everitt, K. Bird, A. Wagner, & M. Lalancette. Where to Run? Racialized Minority Affinities for In-Group Candidate Districts in Canada. Revised and resubmitted at International Political Science Review.
Ie, K.W. What do Canadians want in their politicians? Examining candidate characteristics and voter assessments through a conjoint experiment. Book chapter submitted for Identity Appeals and Dynamics in Canadian Electoral Politics, eds. J. Everitt, K. Bird, A. Wagner & M. Lalancette.
Everitt, J., K. Bird, K.W. Ie, A. Wagner, & M. Lalancette. District demographics and affinity effects: Measuring the impact of district heterogeneity on candidate-voter affinity and political engagement in Canada. Under revision for submission to Electoral Studies.
Ie, K.W., K. Bird, J. Everitt, A. Wagner, & M. Lalancette. Trust Ties: assessing the impact of voter-candidate intersectionalities and affinities. Under revision for submission to Political Behavior.
Work in Progress
Ie, K.W. Pillars of Power: Building the Westminster Prime Ministerial Branches, 1945-2020. Book manuscript under contract with UBC Press, based on PhD dissertation.
Bird, K., K.W. Ie, J. Everitt, A. Wagner, & M. Lalancette. Inclusive Politics: Building Trust through Diverse Local Candidates. Book manuscript under contract with UBC Press for series “Political Leadership and Trust in Canada”.
Ie, K.W. Representing the Regions? Cabinet Committees and Intrastate Federalism in Canada. Will be submitted to Publius: the Journal of Federalism.
Bird, K., K.W. Ie, J. Everitt, A. Wagner, & M. Lalancette. Political Trust in Context: District-Level Conditions on Trust in Politicians. To be presented at Canadian Political Science Association conference, Toronto, ON, June 2025 and American Political Science Association conference, Vancouver, BC, September 2025.
Ie, K.W., N. Allen, & N. Siklodi. Driver's Seat or Backseat Drivers? Canadian Prime Ministers and Leadership of Cabinet Committees. To be presented at Canadian Political Science Association conference, Toronto, ON, June 2025.
Non-Peer Reviewed Contributions
Ie, K.W., J. Everitt, K. Bird, A. Wagner, & M. Lalancette. Candidate Diversity and Racialized and Indigenous Political Engagement in Canada. Researcher Report for Elections Canada and the Consortium for Electoral Democracy. https://tinyurl.com/4bd8t2x4
Ie, K.W. Minority representation in the House won’t improve without better data. Policy Options, March 14, 2023. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2023/minority-representation-house-of-commons/
Ie, K.W., K. Bird, & J. Everitt. Diversity, Identity Framing and the Personalized Candidacy: A Survey Experiment. An online survey experiment conducted in March-May 2023. Dataset of approximately 4500 Canadians measuring the impact of affinities between racialized individuals and candidates on voter political engagement.
Ie, K.W., K. Bird, & J. Everitt. Photo Validation Survey. An online survey conducted through MTurk in March 2025, for the purpose of validating candidate photos.
Teaching Experience
Sessional Lecturer
Department of Political Science
University of British Columbia
2017 - Present
Courses: Government of Canada, Federalism in Canada, Executive Leadership in Canadian Politics
Limited-Term Lecturer
Department of Political Science
Simon Fraser University
2018-2019
Courses: Canadian Government, Quantitative Methods, Comparative Parties, Elections, and Governments, US Politics and Government
Awards and Funding
2023. Elections Canada / C-Dem Research Grant
2016-17. Canadian Study of Parliament Group Doctoral Fellowship
2015-16. Social Science and Humanities Research Council Canada Doctoral Scholarship
2013-15. Ontario Graduate Scholarship
2012-13. Faculty of Social Science Graduate Alumni Award
2011-12. Social Science Dean’s Entrance Scholarship
Recent Conference Presentations
2024. The Dynamics of Ministerial Policy Roles in the Canadian Executive. Atlantic Provinces Political Studies Association, Sackville, NB.
2024. Who trusts and who is trusted? Results from an Experiment on Assessments of Candidate Trustworthiness. British Columbia Political Studies Association Conference, Nanaimo, BC.
2024. Gender and the collegial face of cabinet government: explaining collective priorities, presence and power in formal structures. UK Political Studies Association Conference, Glasgow, UK.
2024. “It’s hard to be it if you can’t see it”: Racialized Affinity and Interest in Running for Office in Canada. UK Political Studies Association Conference, Glasgow, UK.
2023. A Shadow of Doubt? Attitudes and Affinities toward Chinese-Canadian Candidates in the Midst of the China Election Interference Investigation. International Society of Political Psychology Meeting, Montreal, QC.
2023. Mandate Letters and Ministers as Policy Actors in the Canadian federal executive. Canadian Political Science Association Conference, Toronto, ON.
2023. Does Context Matter? Effects of District Heterogeneity on Voter Affinity and Political Engagement. Canadian Political Science Association Conference, Toronto, ON
2023. Candidate Diversity and Racialized and Indigenous Political Engagement in Canada. Forum on Democratic Citizenship, Consortium for Electoral Democracy and Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, Montreal, QC.
2022. Who Studies Canadian Politics? Faculty Diversity in a Political Science Subfield. Invited Speaker, Bell Chair in Parliamentary Democracy Lecture Series.
2021. Ministerial Mandate Letters: Policy Priorities and Coordination in the Canadian
Executive. Canadian Political Science Association Conference. Online.
Professional and Departmental Service
2022-present. Member, UBC Faculty Association Equity Committee and BIPOC Working Group.
2015. Panel Discussant. Recessions, Inequality, and Regime Survival. Midwest Political Science
Association Conference, Chicago, IL.
2015. Panel Chair. Political Trust (or Distrust). Midwest Political Science Association
Conference, Chicago, IL.
2015. Co-organizer. Western Political Science Research Forum (graduate student conference).
2013-2015. Chair and PhD Representative. Graduate Association of Political Science.
Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario.
Methods Training
ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods. 2014.
Quantitative Methodology and Statistics, Game Theory, Social Network Analysis, Experimental and Survey Design.
Proficient in R, Stata, SPSS, Qualtrics, MTurk, and specialized applications such as UCINet (social network analysis), Gretl and Eviews (time series regression and econometric analysis).
Professional Affiliations
Canadian Political Science Association
American Political Science Association
UK Political Studies Association
References
References available upon request, or see PDF version.