Robert Lawson was born in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He currently resides in Winnipeg where he works as an instructional designer at the University of Manitoba. He has a PhD in German literature and has researched and taught courses on the Holocaust and German cultural history. He has published on a variety of topics in different journals and newspapers. One of his major research interests is the Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop; in particular, the years he spent in Canada from 1910 to 1914.