A child of Canadian missionary parents, Daniel Coleman grew up in Ethiopia. He returned to Canada to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Regina, Campion College, and the University of Alberta. Currently, Dr. Coleman is a professor and Canadian Research Chair in Diversity in Canadian Literary Culture at McMaster University.

Dr. Coleman teaches and carries out research in Canadian Literature, the literary and cultural production of categories of privilege such as whiteness, masculinity, and Britishness, and the literatures of immigration and diaspora. He is known nationally and internationally for his work and has published numerous books including White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006), The Scent of Eucalyptus: A Missionary Childhood in Ethiopia (Goose Lane Editions, 2003), and has co-edited seven scholarly volumes on various issues including early Canadian culture, Caribbean Canadian writing, masculinities, postcoloniality, and race.

Dr. Coleman has received numerous honours for his academic work.  In 2006, his book White Civility was awarded the Raymond Klibansky Prize and nominated for the James Russell Lowell Prize for most outstanding book, and Scent of Eucalyptus: A Missionary Childhood in Ethiopia received the Arts Hamiliton Literary Award for Best Non-Fiction. Dr. Coleman is also the recipient of the McMaster University’s President’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision, the Canadian National Magazine Awards Silver Medal for the essay “The Babies in the Colonial Washtub”, the John Charles Polanyi Prize awarded to young researchers who have recently completed their PhDs, and the University of Regina’s Governor General’s Gold Medal.