Louis Patrick Leroux

Louis Patrick Leroux is a Franco-Ontarian who is the current President (Rector) of Saint Paul University, a human-scaled, Humanities-focused, bilingual university in Ottawa. Drawn to forms and modes of artistic expression, usually on the margins and between genres, he interested in how art can be a tool for social change. He is a steadfast advocate for the Humanities in both academia and society.

Previously, to Saint Paul University he was at Concordia University in Montreal for twenty years, where he was a Full Professor in both departments of English and Études françaises. He also served for five years as Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Arts and Science, facilitating research in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

Dr. Leroux was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2017, where he served on the Executive, including as Secretary of the College. He also served on RSC Council and RSC International committee. He has also been active internationally with the Global Academies of Liberal Arts.
Louis Patrick Leroux studied Theatre and French Literature at the University of Ottawa (BA, Hons.), Arts Management at École des HEC-Montréal (DESS), Theatre Studies at the Sorbonne nouvelle in Paris (DEA/Mastère 2 and PhD) as well as higher education leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

With over 100 scholarly publications and a dozen books of plays (some were translated into English, German, Spanish and Bengali), Dr. Leroux has given over two hundred talks and was a visiting scholar at Duke University, Universidad de Chile, Duke, Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, Univerzita Karlova in Prague, École normale supérieure de Lyon, Centre national des arts du cirque in Champagne. He was also a regular performance and circus history instructor for a decade at National Circus School in Montreal. He founded the Montreal Working Group on Circus Research which he led for over a decade. Previous to academic life, he was a playwright and stage director who founded and led Ottawa’s Théâtre la Catapulte in 1992 and cofounded La nouvelle scène theatre space.

He has written on the research-creation process, organisational management, Québec theatre, and contemporary circus. Recent publications include Contemporary Circus, with Katie Lavers and Jon Burtt (Routledge, two editions, also translated into Chinese and Korean), Cirque Global: Québec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, co-edited with Charles Batson (MQUP), La culture Québécoise au temps de la pandémie. Réaction, adaptation, normalisation, resistance et hybridation, co-edited with Hervé Guay and Sandria Bouliane (PUM), Esti toastée des deux bords. Les formes populaires de l’oralité chez Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, co-edited with Sophie Dubois (PUM), a forthcoming book on forms of socially engaged circus (PUL).