Conference: “Citizen Participation in the EU and Canada: Challenges and Change” May 24-25, 2007
Biographies
Herman Bakvis (PhD, UBC) is Professor of Public Administration at the University of Victoria. He joined UVic in July 2005 after 26 years at Dalhousie University in both the Department of Political Science and School of Public Administration. He was Director of the School at Dalhousie from 2000 to 2004. He has also held visiting appointments at the Australian National University, Queen’s University and the University of Saskatchewan. His research and teaching interests include intergovernmental relations, the policy process and government structure and organization, and political parties and party financing. Recent publications include: The Horizontal Challenge: Line Departments, Central Agencies and Leadership (Canada School of Public Service, 2004), co- authored with Luc Juillet and Canadian Federalism: Performance, Effectiveness, and Legitimacy (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2007), co-edited with Grace Skogstad. In addition he has been involved in applied policy research for departments and agencies such Human Resources Development Canada, Transport Canada, and Treasury Board Secretariat, as well Royal Commissions such as the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing. Web page: http://web.uvic.ca/padm/faculty/bakvis/index.htm
Luciano Bardi Ph. D. (1987 - The Johns Hopkins University) is Professor of International Relations, European Political System, and Comparative Politics at the University of Pisa. His previous appointments were at the European University Institute in Florence and at the University of Bologna. He has been involved in numerous international research projects including the First MEP Survey (General coordinator of field work) and the Katz & Mair project on Party organization (project director for Italian and Transnational parties). He has written extensively in English and Italian on political parties in general and on European Union parties in particular. His most recent publications include Il Parlamento Europeo (2004 co-author), Partiti e sistemi di partito (editor 2006), I partiti italiani. Iscritti, dirigenti, eletti (co-editor 2007) and Dimensioni e dilemmi della sicurezza nel Mediterraneo (co-editor 2007). Web page: http://virmap.unipi.it/cgi-bin/virmap/vmibo?docenti:8135397;main
André Blais is professor in the department of political science at the Université de Montréal, a research fellow with the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative (CIREQ) and with the Center for Interuniversity Research Analysis on Organizations (CIRANO), and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is past president of the Canadian Political Science Association and a co-investigator of the Canadian Election Study since 1988. His research interests are elections, electoral systems, voting, turnout, public opinion and methodology. Web page: http://www.crcee.umontreal.ca/directeur_a.html
1 Conference: “Citizen Participation in the EU and Canada: Challenges and Change” May 24-25, 2007
William Cross is associate professor of political science at Carleton University. He is a student of Canadian and comparative political parties and election campaigns. He joined Carleton after 8 years at Mount Allison University. Prior to that he was a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. His work has appeared in many academic journals including Political Research Quarterly, Party Politics, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Canadian Public Policy, Representation, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Journal of Canadian Studies and International Journal of Canadian Studies. His most recent book is Political Parties, part of the Canadian Democratic Audit series. From 2003-05 he served as Director of Research for the New Brunswick Commission on Legislative Democracy. Web page : http://www.carleton.ca/polisci/Faculty/list/cross.html
Agnieszka Dobrzynska is a postdoctoral fellow with the Canada Research Chair in Electoral Studies at the Université de Montréal. Her Ph.D. thesis (Université de Montréal, 2002) focused on the role of the media in electoral campaigns. Her research interests include elections and voting behaviour, public opinion, media coverage of politics, electoral systems and methodology. Her main postdoctoral project examines the impact of the media coverage on political engagement and cynicism in Canada. Web page: http://www.crcee.umontreal.ca/equipe_ad_a.html
Jørgen Elklit is a Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. His main professional interests are electoral systems and election management in both established and emerging democracies. Since 1990 he has also been engaged in advisory missions on elections and democratization – and other related activities – in 20 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. His other main field is Danish politics, where he has worked on a number of topics, including political party membership and the current process of reforming Danish local government structure. Web page : http://www.ps.au.dk/showpage.asp?lPageID=46
Maria Gratschew joined IDEA in 1999 as project manager responsible for the Voter Turnout Project (
2 Conference: “Citizen Participation in the EU and Canada: Challenges and Change” May 24-25, 2007
Jean-Pierre Kingsley is the incoming President and Chief Executive Officer of IFES, and will assume this role in June 2007. IFES is a non-profit democracy development organization that works to give people a voice in the way that they are governed. As Canada's Chief Electoral Officer from February 1990 until February 2007, he was responsible for the management of all federal electoral events, including the 1992 federal referendum, all general elections, and numerous by- elections. Jean-Pierre Kingsley instituted significant changes within the Elections Canada organization, as well as orchestrated and implemented major electoral reforms. Among his major accomplishments as Chief Electoral Officer were the development of the National Register of Electors (permanent voters list) and the introduction of computer use in all areas of electoral administration, from digitized geocartography to local field office communications and management. His accomplishments have contributed to Elections Canada's reputation as a world leader in electoral management. Before his nomination as Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, he held a variety of other positions in both the private and public sectors, notably: Executive Director of Edmonton's Charles Camsell Hospital, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Ottawa General Hospital, Deputy Secretary (Program Evaluation) in the Ministry of State for Social Development, Deputy Secretary of the Personnel Policy Branch in the Treasury Board Secretariat, and Assistant Deputy Registrar General in the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Web page: http://www.ifes.org/
Miriam Lapp joined Elections Canada in April 2002, and is currently Acting Director of International Research and Cooperation. Previously, she held the positions of Senior Analyst and Assistant Director in the National and International Research and Policy Development directorate, where she played an active role in developing and implementing voter outreach initiatives. Prior to joining Elections Canada, she was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, where she taught courses in introductory and Canadian politics, political parties and interest groups, and elections and voting. Ms. Lapp holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Université de Montréal, with a specialization in electoral participation. Web page: http://www.elections.ca/
Lawrence LeDuc is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His books include The Politics of Direct Democracy, Comparing Democracies (with Richard G. Niemi and Pippa Norris), and Absent Mandate: Canadian Electoral Politics in an Era of Restructuring (with Harold D. Clarke, Jane Jenson and Jon H. Pammett). He is a member of the editorial boards of Electoral Studies, the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties and the European Journal of Political Research, and a member of the IDEA expert group on Direct Democracy. Web page: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/polsci/faculty_staff/ourfaculty/lawrence_leduc.htm
3 Conference: “Citizen Participation in the EU and Canada: Challenges and Change” May 24-25, 2007
Mary Pat MacKinnon leads CPRN’s public engagement research and outreach activities, including citizens’ deliberative dialogues, spanning issues such as health care, budgetary policy, Canada’s future, youth civic participation, and environmental issues. She believes that strong democracy requires robust civic participation and informed citizens. This means enlarging public spaces for collective informed conversations about what matters to Canadians. Her work speaks to the importance of strengthening the theory and practice of civic engagement and valuing inclusive approaches to knowledge creation and mobilization. She holds a MPA and BA (Honours) in Political Studies and History from Queens University. Previous experience includes senior management and policy positions with the Canadian Co-operative Association, the Social Planning Council of Ottawa, and the N.S. Government. She also served as a Research Associate, Pepin- Robarts Task Force on National Unity. She has extensive volunteer experience in public interest advocacy and public education. CPRN is an independent not-for-profit national organization with a mission to create knowledge and lead public dialogue and debate on social and economic issues of importance to Canadians. Web page: http://www.cprn.com/people.cfm?person=55&l=en
Jon Pammett is Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies of the Faculty of Public Affairs, and Professor of Political Science, at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is also co-Director of the Carleton University Survey Centre, and Canadian delegate to the International Social Survey Programme. He is co-author of Political Choice in Canada and Absent Mandate, books about voting behaviour in Canadian elections. He is co-editor of, and contributing author to, The Canadian General Election of 2006, as well as several volumes in this series on earlier elections. He has published journal articles on public opinion and voting behaviour in Canada and Russia, and has also worked in the field of political education. He is currently engaged in a study of voting turnout in Canada as compared to other countries, and is also writing a book on Canadian elections through history. Web page: http://www.carleton.ca/polisci/Faculty/list/pammett.html
Stephen Rooney is Director of Communications at the UK Electoral Commission, where his responsibilities include campaigns and public information services. Before joining the Electoral Commission in 2005, he worked extensively in the voluntary section, including as Head of Communications at the deafblind charity Sense, Head of Public Affairs at the British Deaf Association, and as a trustee of the mental health charity PACE and of the UK Council on Deafness. He has also worked as a journalist and taught at the University of Sussex. Web page: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/
Jonathan Rose is Associate Professor of Political Studies at Queen's University where he teaches and researches Canadian politics and political communication. He is the author of a book on government advertising, co-editor of a book on Canadian federalism and has written articles on political advertising and the mass media in Canada. For the past year, he has been Academic Director of the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. Web page: http://jonathanrose.ca
4 Conference: “Citizen Participation in the EU and Canada: Challenges and Change” May 24-25, 2007
Eileen Saunders is the founding Director of the Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs at Carleton University, a faculty member of the School of Journalism and Communication, and has served as the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs since 1997. Her research interests are in the fields of youth, citizenship and media, social inequality and gender, and media institutions and policies. She is the author of numerous publications concerning such topics as public opinion and social inequality, access of marginalized groups to news media during elections, regulatory guidelines regarding gender representation in the media, and the role of violence in the media. Web page : http://www.carleton.ca/sjc/facultystaff/saunders.html
Alan Siaroff is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. He is the author of Comparing Political Regimes: A Thematic Introduction to Comparative Politics, Comparative European Party Systems: An Analysis of Parliamentary Elections Since 1945, and various articles and book chapters on democratization, electoral systems, party politics, and political institutions. He has also provided expert advice on electoral reform for government commissions in both New Brunswick and Quebec. Web Page: http://www.uleth.ca/pol/faculty/siaroff.htm
Lise Togeby is a Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. She is currently the Director of the PhD programme of the Department and also a member of the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty. From 1997 to 2004 she was Chairman of the Steering Group of “the Danish Power and Democracy Study” (Magtudredningen), a major project sponsored by Parliament. During the 2007 spring term she is a member of one of the international panels evaluating all academic research at Uppsala University, Sweden. Web Page: http://www.ps.au.dk/showpage.asp?lPageID=65
Mark E. Warren teaches political theory at the University of British Columbia, where he holds the Harold and Dorrie Merilees Chair for the Study of Democracy and is Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions. His current research interests include new forms of citizen participation and democratic representation, the relationship between civil society and democracy, and political corruption. Web page: http://www.politics.ubc.ca/index.php?id=2516
5 Conference: “Citizen Participation in the EU and Canada: Challenges and Change” May 24-25, 2007
Paul Whiteley is Professor of Government at the University of Essex in Britain. He is the author or coauthor of some 16 books on electoral behaviour, British political parties and Political Economy. These include Political Control of the Macroeconomy (Sage, 1986); Labour's Grassroots: The Politics of Party Membership (Oxford University Press, 1992); True Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership (Oxford University Press, 1994); Third Force Politics: Liberal Democrats at the Grassroots (Oxford University Press, 2006); High Intensity Participation: The Dynamics of Party Activism in Britain (University of Michigan Press, 2002); Political Choice in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2004); Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2004). He is the author or coauthor of some fifty papers in academic journals including the British Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the European Journal of Political Research, Electoral Studies and Political Studies. He was director of the Economic and Social Research Council research programme on Democracy and Participation from 1998 to 2003 and is currently co-director of the British Election Study. His previous appointments were at the University of Sheffield, the University of Bristol, the University of Arizona and the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
Web page: http://www.essex.ac.uk/government/staff/academic/whiteleyp.shtm
6