About Douglas

Douglas Janoff, Ph.D. is from Ottawa, Canada’s capital. He has lived and worked across Canada, in the US, and in Europe, Latin America and Asia: he speaks French and Spanish fluently. Click here for his resume and to learn more about his work as a Canadian diplomat, author, teacher, journalist and academic researcher.

He was appointed to Canada’s Foreign Service in 2009. His career included diplomatic postings to Washington, D.C., Afghanistan and Pakistan. Before working for Canada’s foreign ministry, he was a policy advisor and investigator at the Department of National Defence, Public Safety Canada and other federal departments.

He has a diverse academic background – in international relations, criminology and creative writing. In 2022, Palgrave Macmillan published his book Queer Diplomacy: Homophobia, International Relations and LGBT Human Rights. He is also the author of Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2005).

Dr. Janoff’s posting to Afghanistan was an exciting and challenging moment in his diplomatic career. One photo shows the body armour that diplomats were required to wear when moving through the city. Another photo was taken on a frosty day after emerging from a meeting at the presidential palace in Kabul – in 2020, the year before President Ashraf Ghani’s government fell. The third photo was taken in 2025, when Dr. Janoff delivered a lecture on his book Queer Diplomacy at the Embassy of Canada to the Republic of Korea in Seoul.