Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Clare McKendry is a graduate student researcher at Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Operational Research and Analysis (DRDC/CORA). She is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Her dissertation focuses on the evolution of Taiwan’s policy in the South China Sea disputes. With a focus on the Indo-Pacific as an emerging professional in international affairs and defence policy, she writes extensively on China’s use of maritime infrastructure as a grey-zone tactic, autocratic regimes use of shadow fleets, and cross-Strait relations. Elsewhere, she has published with the Canadian Network for Research on Security, Extremism, and Society (CANSES) on researcher safety and research trauma recommendations for universities, supervisors, and researchers. All views expressed are the author's alone and not necessarily representative of the Government of Canada/Department of National Defence.
To advance my dissertation research, I took on a month-long role as a Visiting Research Fellow at INDSR. During my time in Taiwan, I interviewed over a dozen people (in addition to the 21 interviews I have conducted thus far) ranging from academia, government and military to gain deeper understanding of how the ROC articulates its claim to the South China Sea historically and in the present day. This includes the ways of which Taiwan constructs its interests in the region through the reliance on historical archives, how political parties associate different perspectives, identity, and meanings to the claim and assessing the defence and security implications of holding onto or hypothetically abandoning claims to the South China Sea. In addition to interviews, I conducted extensive analysis of hundreds of archives from East View Archive, digitially available documents from Academia Sinica and Historica, the National Archives Administration and those showcased during the 2014 Exhibition of Historical Archives on the Southern Territories of the R.O.C. On top of this, I also reviewed hundreds of news stories on Taiwan's position on the South China Sea disputes from a variety of sources both in and outside of Taiwan, including the Taipei Times, Taiwan News, Focus Taiwan, Liberty Times, and the New York Times. Lastly, I used Threads and publicly available posts on Facebook to discern Taiwanese legislators views on the disputes and the actions of the ROC government over time. As part of my Fellowship, I shall deliver a final presentation on my research and a report based on my findings. This research was made possible by a combination of the 2026 Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) Scholarship, 2026-2027 Ontario Graduate Scholsrship (OGS), President Graduate Scholarship (PGS) and other small grants.
I am currently on a year’s long co-op term working under a Senior Defence Scientist on defence and security issues related to China and Indo-Pacific affairs based on DND/CAF priorities. In this role, I conduct open-source intelligence (OSINT) research in writing briefing notes, talking points, primers, preparing PowerPoint presentation slides, scientific letters and reports among other deliverables as necessary to be read and reviewed by senior military officials on a variety of strategic and security concerns in the region. Areas of specialization include capability development, conflict resolution, grey-zone maritime operations and infrastructure, military modernization, emerging and disruptive technologies, espionage, intelligence, information operations, and foreign and defence policy.
In addition to fulfilling the duties outlined in TA agreements, I frequently substituted for other TAs on short notice, prepared and delivered lectures, held weekly tutorials to enhance students’ understanding and engagement with the course material, in-person office hours, and frequently helped students dealing with academic and issues in their personal lives. I have TA’d several political science courses at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Political Science, including: • PSCI 281: World Politics (Fall 2023/2024) • PSCI 231: Business & Government in Canada (Spring 2024) • PSCI 282: Foreign Policy (Winter 2024/2025)
In addition to fulfilling the duties outlined in TA agreements, I frequently substituted for other TAs on short notice, prepared and delivered lectures, held weekly tutorials to enhance students’ understanding and engagement with the course material, in-person office hours, and frequently helped students dealing with academic and issues in their personal lives. I have TA’d several political science courses at the University of Guelph's Department of Political Science, including: • POLS*2230 DE: Canadian Public Policy (Spring 2022; 2023) • POLS*3410: U.S. Government & Politics (Winter 2023) • POLS*1150: Understanding Politics (Fall 2022) • POLS*2100: Comparative Politics (Winter 2022) • POLS*3670: Comparative Public Policy (Fall 2021) • POLS*2300: Canadian Government & Politics (Fall 2021)
In my role, I coordinated with the Manager, Quality & Business Process Improvement to consolidate the Company’s internal technology policies. Moreover, I led meetings between the IT Department and Manager to bring drafted policies into Canada’s information technology and security requirements namely the “Cloud Computing for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises” guidelines. I also prepared procedural documents with related workflow charts, provided voice overs for Company presentations and uploaded the materials to the relevant documentation site for all employees to access.