Marcel Martel (F.R.S.C.) is a Professor of History and the holder of the Avie Bennett Historica Canada Chair in Canadian History. A specialist in twentieth-century Canadian history, he has published on nationalism, relations between Quebec and the French-speaking minorities of Canada, public policy and counterculture, moral regulation, deviance, drug use, and RCMP surveillance activities.

Marcel Martel investigated the institutional relationship between francophone minority groups and Quebec society. The results of this research offered a new understanding of French Canada and of the effect that the Quiet Revolution had on the institutional network that had been built up throughout the course of the twentieth century to strengthen solidarity among French Canadians in Canada. His findings help to explain the tensions between the political elites of francophone minority groups and Quebec nationalists with regard to the Quebec constitutional issue. His research also examined the growth of French Canadian nationalism and the emergence of Quebec identity and nationalism, as well as the repercussions for francophone minority groups, which used to be included in the notion of a French-Canadian nation. Finally, he analyzed the formation and implementation of federal government and Quebec public policies toward francophone minority groups in the 1960s.

In 2006, he published a book on public policy and the use of recreational drugs in Canada in the 1960s. Entitled Not This Time: Canadians, Public Policy and the Marijuana Question, 1961-1975 (Toronto, University of Toronto, 2006), his book explores the recreational use of marijuana and its emergence as a topic of social debates. Martel demonstrates how the media, interest groups, state institutions, bureaucrats, and politicians influenced the development and implementation of public policy on drugs. He illustrates how two loose coalitions made up of interest groups, addiction research organizations, and bureaucrats – one supporting existing legislation, and the other favouring liberalization of the Narcotics Control Act – dominated the debate over the legalization of marijuana. Those favouring liberalized drug laws, while influential, had difficulty presenting a unified front and had problems justifying their cause while the effects of marijuana use on health were still in question.

His current research projects are on national celebrations, state surveillance and the experience of immigrants in the Americas.