The Digital Information, Security, and Resilience (DISR) Research Group conducts interdisciplinary, scholarly, and policy-focused research on the circulation and impact of digital information in Canada. The group adopts a wide, diverse, and innovative range of research approaches and methodologies to investigate the complexities of the digital information space.
DISR’s research integrates conceptual and theoretical inquiry with empirical analysis to better understand the complex pathways of digital mis- and disinformation in Canada, and their implications for Canadian information security and democratic resilience. While unpacking the mechanisms, incentives, and consequences of digital mis- and disinformation spread across online platforms, DISR’s work highlights how these phenomena are shaped by geopolitical dynamics, interstate engagement, and international security concerns.
Situated at the intersection of multiple disciplines, our work pays particular attention to the experiences of Canada’s ethnocultural diaspora communities. We examine the differential impacts of disinformation, including individual and community-level harms such as information pollution, demobilization, stigmatization and discrimination, erosion of trust in democratic institutions and processes, and digital transnational repression in closed messaging spaces. We aim to identify how these dynamics affect democratic participation and social cohesion.
Through a range of outputs, DISR seeks to generate and share actionable insights that build academic and research capacity, inform policy, and shape institutional responses. Committed to engaged knowledge mobilization, the group partners with civil society organizations, researchers, and policymakers to amplify impact and drive meaningful change.
Research Team
Dr. Bessma Momani
Associate Vice-President, International and Professor of Political Science
Dr. Bessma Momani is Associate Vice-President, International and Full Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. She is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States’ Institute in Washington, DC, and a Fulbright Scholar. She is a Governor on the board of the International Development Research Centre, and an Advisor on the Board of the Canadian International Council.
She was Assistant Vice-President, Research and International in the Office of Research in 2022-2023 and in 2021, interim Associate Vice-President, Interdisciplinary and Sponsored Research 2021-2022, Assistant Vice-President, International Relations in 2020, Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation from 2015-2018, non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, and was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Mortara Center.
She has worked as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, both in the communications office and the Independent Evaluation Office. From 2018-2022 she served as a member of the National Security Transparency Advisory Group at Public Safety Canada.
Bessma has received a number of awards and prizes for her research and work. She has been awarded multiple Insight Development Grants, Insight Grants, Partnership Development and Engage Grants, and Connection Grants funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. From 2019 to 2022, she served as the director of a three-year-funded Department of National Defence network called the Defence and Security Foresight Group. Bessma also spearheaded the Pluralism Project which explored the link between Canadian diversity and economic prosperity. This has led to funding grant from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on bringing racialized women into the Canadian economy and Heritage Canada on the impact of disinformation on ethnocultural communities.
Bessma has authored, co-authored and co-edited more than fourteen books. In addition, she has written nearly 90 peer-reviewed academic articles or book chapters that examine international organizations, international political economy, nternational affairs, gender and diversity, cybersecurity and digital transformations and International Affairs.
As a frequent media and political analyst on geopolitics, international affairs and the global economy, Bessma has written frequent editorials in The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, the Economist, Washington Post, the National Post and the Toronto Star. She is also a regular media contributor, having done thousands of live broadcast interviews, with CNN, CBC News, CTV, Al Jazeera, PBS Newshour, TRT World and BNN Bloomberg.
Dr. Shelly Ghai Bajaj (Ph.D., University of Toronto) is a Research Associate and Fellow at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs. She works on projects relating to the spread of digital mis/disinformation, transnational information flows, digital transnational repression, and the impacts of mis/disinformation on Canadian democracy and ethnocultural diasporas. She recently participated in the policy consultation testimonies for the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference (the Hogue Commission). She is co-editor of a forthcoming book titled Disinformation and Democracy in the Digital Age: A Canadian Perspective (University of Toronto) and has published op-ed and analysis pieces in Policy Options, The Toronto Star, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
Shah Ameer Khan
Research Manager