Nancy Taber’s journey as an expert in the intersection of learning, gender and militarism has taken some interesting twists and turns.

Her days serving in the Canadian military as a Sea King helicopter air navigator led her to pursue feminist studies and later fiction writing and facilitating creative writing workshops.

“Learning about feminism helped me view my military experiences from a critical lens, informing my research of how military culture is structurally inequitable, which in turn has informed my research recommendations for transformative organizational change,” says the Professor of Education.

For this and other work, Taber has been awarded Brock University’s 2025 Distinguished Research and Creative Activity Award.

“Through her difficult, trailblazing and high-impact work on gender discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual assault in the military, Dr. Taber is recognized as one of Canada’s leading experts contributing to meaningful change in the military,” says Acting Vice-President, Research Michelle McGinn.

“Dr. Taber communicates feminist social justice concepts not only in academic papers but also through compelling fiction, making her scholarship accessible for varied and wide audiences,” she says.

Taber has a particular focus on women’s experiences of organizational culture, official policies, education and informal everyday practices in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) as well as issues such as gender discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Through her journal publications and fictional works, she explores the complicated ways women are affected by, and involved in, war and militaries; how values and actions related to gender in the military influence society and vice versa; and how adult educators and critical military scholars can understand these experiences to work for societal change.

“My research methodologies and forms of publication are intentionally intended for different audiences: academics and students, government and military policy-makers and decision-makers, and the general public, to allow for greater knowledge mobilization, public engagement and impact,” she says.

Throughout her career, Taber’s scholarship and creative activities have resulted in a number of achievements:

• Receiving $750,000 in 2022, as one of three co-directors, to work with the Department of National Defence and the CAF on research examining root causes of discrimination, sexual misconduct and systematic racism in the CAF.
• Being recognized as one of Esprit de Corps magazine’s Top Women in Defence 2022.
• Submitting an expert report during the Heyder-Beattie Class Action lawsuit and settlement, which involved several former military members who filed class action lawsuits against the CAF for sexual harassment, sexual assault and discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.
• Being inducted into the International and Continuing Adult Education Hall of Fame in 2022 for contributions to the field of adult education and her military research.
• Authoring several short stories and her debut novel, A Sea of Spectres, which she hopes will help readers rethink how women are affected by and implicated in situations of war and violence.

Taber says she is “energized” by the award and credits support from Brock, the Faculty of Education and the Department of Educational Studies for the success of her work.