Jill Vickers

Vickers was born in Britain during the Second World War in 1942, to an English mother and a father who was a Canadian serviceman posted in England. After the war she and her war-bride mother followed her father to Canada, where they resided in Hamilton, Ontario, until her parents' divorce. Thereafter, she and he mother moved to Toronto, where she graduated from Harbord Collegiate.

She briefly attended Queen's University, transferring to Carleton University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1965. She moved to London, England, where she studied at the London School of Economics, eventually earning a Doctor of Philosophy in political philosophy. She has been a professor at Carleton since 1971.

She was married to the Carleton history professor Keith Johnson until his death in 2018.

A self-described socialist and long-time activist and supporter of the New Democratic Party, Vickers ran for a seat in the House of Commons of Canada, during the 1979 federal election as the candidate for the NDP for the riding of Ottawa—Carleton.

Although she finished third, behind the Progressive Conservative incumbent Jean Pigott and the victorious Liberal candidate Jean-Luc Pépin, the experience was an important development in her understanding of the challenges faced by women involved in partisan politics in Canada.

In 1984, in an event archived on YouTube, she (with Gerald Caplan) debated Objectivist philosophers John Ridpath and Leonard Peikoff, defending socialism against their advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism.

The Canadian Political Science Association has announced that the Jill Vickers Prize, will be awarded to the author of the best paper presented, in English or French, at the annual conference of the Canadian Political Science Association on the topic of gender and politics.

In 2003 Vickers was selected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Vickers is also a Chancellor's Professor of Political Science at Carleton.

• Carleton University bio
• Canadian Political Science Association - Jill Vickers Prize