Fonds F0083 - Thomas E. Flanagan fonds.

Thomas Eugene Flanagan was born in Ottawa, Illinois on March 5, 1944. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1965; his MA and PhD were completed at Duke University in 1967 and 1970 respectively. During 1967-1968 he studied at the Free University of West Berlin. In 1968 Flanagan joined the academic staff of the University of Calgary as an assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1972 and to full Professor in 1979. He served as Head of the department from 1982-1987 and as Academic Policy Advisor to the President from 1988-1990.

Dr. Flanagan has spent much of his academic career studying and writing about Louis Riel and the Metis. He was a sub-editor for the Riel Project, a multi-year research endeavour which resulted in the publication of the collected writings of Louis Riel for the centennial of Riel's death. Other major topics of research have included native affairs, the Canadian electoral system, the Canadian Constitution, human rights and descrimination, and game theory as it applies to Canadian politics.

In 1990 Flanagan joined the Reform Party of Canada. He was hired as Director of Policy, Strategy and Communications in May 1991, a position he held until 1993. Flanagan left the Party bureaucracy after he objected to the hiring of Rick Anderson, a former Liberal Party campaign organiser, as director of Reform's federal election campaign. In 1995 Flanagan published "Waiting for the Wave: the Reform Party and Preston Manning", a history of the party and of Manning's leadership. As well as analytical criticism, it included some praise for Manning and defence of the Party. The book, which had been awaited with trepidation by party insiders, was generally well received both within the Party and by others. Flanagan managed Stephen Harper's successful campaigns for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance Party of Canada in 2001-2002 and in 2004 for the leadership of the newly created Conservative Party of Canada, which resulted from the amalgamation of the Canadian Alliance Party and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

Dr. Flanagan has received numerous awards and honours during his academic career, including Prix Champlain (1978), the University of British Columbia Canadian Biography Medal (1979), the Margaret McWilliams Medal from the Manitoba Historical Association (1993), the Donner Prize (2001), the Donald Smiley Prize (2001), and the Faculty of Social Sciences Distinguished Research Award (2001). He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1996.