About Douglas
Douglas Janoff, Ph.D. was appointed to Canada’s Foreign Service in 2009. He is a Senior Foreign Service Officer at Canada’s foreign ministry, Global Affairs. A seasoned human rights negotiator, his career has included diplomatic postings to Washington, D.C., Afghanistan and Pakistan. Click here for his resume and to learn more about his work experience in the Government of Canada.
The photo above 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 photo to the left shows the body armour that diplomats were required to wear when moving through the city.
Dr. Janoff worked part-time on his Ph.D. for more than thirteen years while working full-time as a diplomat. He defended his Ph.D. in Canadian Studies while posted to Islamabad. In 2022, Palgrave Macmillan published his book Queer Diplomacy: Homophobia, International Relations and LGBT Human Rights. He also has degrees in political science, creative writing, and criminology and is the author of Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2005).
Dr. Janoff grew up in Eastern Ontario and has lived for many years in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, a beautiful city built on unceded Anishinabe Algonquin territory. Before working in diplomacy, he was a freelance journalist, community activist, policy advisor, university instructor, and investigator of human rights violations in prisons and the military. He has lived across Canada and in different parts of the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia: he speaks French and Spanish fluently.