UPEI community saddened by death of esteemed faculty member
The University of Prince Edward Island community was saddened by the sudden death of Dr. Barry Bartmann on Friday, August 21. Dr. Bartmann had been a Professor of Political Science at UPEI since 1987.
“Our University has lost a great professor and colleague,” said President Alaa Abd-El-Aziz. “On behalf of the entire UPEI community, I pass on my most sincere sympathies to Dr. Bartmann’s sister Sheila, his extended family, friends, and colleagues—especially those in the departments of Political Science and Island Studies.”
His colleagues from the Political Science and Island Studies departments have prepared the following tribute:
As all those who knew Barry Bartmann will agree, he was an exceptional human being, a professor in the old mode, who cared about learning and teaching. He would have turned 74 in September.
Barry was an undergraduate at Waterloo Lutheran (now Wilfred Laurier) University and obtained his MA and PhD in political science at the University of Western Ontario and the London School of Economics. Barry’s areas of expertise included the International Relations of Small States, International Relations (Foreign Policy Analysis, International Organizations, Integration Studies) and Comparative Politics (Small States, Britain and Western Europe, Middle East Studies).
Of very few academics can it be said that they almost single-handedly created a new field in their discipline, but it was true of Barry. After he arrived at UPEI in 1987, he was instrumental in developing Island Studies, the examination of small island jurisdictions such as Barbados, the Faroes, Iceland, Mauritius, and many others. His passion for Island Studies came through in his work; his international scholarship was highly regarded. He provided specialist advice to various North Atlantic jurisdictions, including Constitutional Committees and Governments of the Åland Islands, the Faroes, and Iceland.
Barry was the academic driver to the internationalization of island studies at UPEI, starting with the spectacularly successful “Islands Living” Conference (1992), then the North Atlantic Islands Programme—now the North Atlantic Forum, which is meeting in Summerside in September this year; he helped organize the Island Studies minor at UPEI (1999), and the Master of Arts in Island Studies (2003).
Barry was a recognized authority on sub-national island jurisdictions and the international relations of small (or micro) states, those very small countries usually overlooked and ignored by most scholars in comparative politics and international relations, and he published articles on places such as Andorra, Liechtenstein, and San Marino. As well, Barry analyzed the role of non-recognized states—among many, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Somaliland, Transnistria, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus—in the international community, and co-edited the book De Facto States: The Quest for Sovereignty. He helped organize, and he delivered papers, at many international conferences on these fields.
Unlike many in the social sciences, Barry was also an excellent writer, and his articles were a joy to read. UPEI, and the wider academic community, has indeed lost an erudite scholar—as well as a wonderful cook!
It should also be noted that Barry was a dedicated and outstanding teacher. His many students always held him in very high regard and enjoyed immensely his vast knowledge of the subject matter he taught—and it was a very wide range, indeed. Our students loved him and they will miss him.
The flags on campus have been lowered to half-mast in honour of Dr. Bartmann and will remain so until after the funeral service on Friday, August 28. Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Maclean’s Funeral Home: www.macleanfh.com
A memorial for Dr. Bartmann will be held on campus from 4-5 pm, Friday, August 28 in the Faculty Lounge of SDU Main Building.
