Julian Brown is an emeritus professor in Chemistry at Queen's University. Having grown up in Sydney, Australia, Brown met his wife, Kaaren, in Illinois. They married and moved to Kingston in 1962, moved to Australia for several years, and returned to Kingston in 1969. Julian and Kaaren Brown founded the Kingston Prize, Canada’s biennial portrait competition, in 2005.
Donald Harman Akenson (born May 22, 1941, Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American historian and author. Notably prolific, he has written at least 23 book-length, scholarly monographs, 3 jointly-authored scholarly books, 6 works of fiction and historical fiction, and 55 scholarly articles. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Historical Society (UK). He is also a Molson Prize Laureate, awarded for a lifetime contribution to Canadian culture. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984, and in 1992 he won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award, then the richest non-fiction book prize in the world. Akenson received his B.A. from Yale University and his doctorate from Harvard University. He is Distinguished University Professor and Douglas Professor of History at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and was simultaneously Beamish Research Professor at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool (2006–10), and senior editor of the McGill-Queen's University Press (1982-2012). While mostly noted as a scholar of Irish migration, Akenson is also an award-winning scholar of religious history. His book "God's Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster," was named the winner of the 1992 Grawemeyer Award. He has received honourary degrees from: D. Litt (hon. causa) McMaster University, 1995; D. Hum (hon. causa) Lethbridge University, 1996; D. Litt (hon. causa) University of Guelph, 2000; D. Laws (hon causa) University of Regina, 2002; D. Litt (hon. causa) The Queen's University of Belfast, 2008; and D. Litt (hon. causa) Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, 2010