Chad Gaffield

Background

About Chad Gaffield

Chad Gaffield, one of Canada’s foremost historians, was CEO of U15 Canada from 2022 to 2025. Previously, he had returned to the University of Ottawa after serving (2006-2014) as President and CEO of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). As president of SSHRC, he helped define a new model of innovation that places understandings about people—human thought and behaviour—at its core, and that reaffirms the contributions of social sciences and humanities research to our society, economy and quality of life. Then, in 2016, Dr Gaffield became President-elect of the RSC, Canada’s national academy for all research fields, and led the development of a strategic plan. During his mandate as President (2017-2019), the RSC embarked on a new era of expanded engagement domestically and internationally including the launch of the G7 Research Summits. In various leadership roles since the 1990s, Dr. Gaffield has emphasized the value for the private, public, and non-profit sectors of increasing our knowledge of human thought and behaviour in the past and present to create more prosperous, just and resilient societies in the 21st century. Dr. Gaffield is a former president of the Canadian Historical Association and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. An expert on 19th and 20th century Canada, Gaffield has analyzed the ways demographic, economic and cultural changes influenced, and are influenced by, institutional and political history. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he received the RSC's J.B. Tyrrell Medal in 2004 for his outstanding contributions to the study of Canada. Other awards include the Antonio Zampolli Prize, presented in June 2011 at Stanford University and given every three years by the international Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations for innovative contributions to digital scholarship. Dr. Gaffield was appointed Officer in the Order of Canada in 2017. Chad Gaffield received his BA and MA from McGill University, and his PhD from the University of Toronto.