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 (<http://www.idea.int/turnout>) and works mainly on voter turnout and civic education, election administration, external voting and compulsory voting issues in IDEA’s Design of Democratic Institutions and processes, former Elections Team. She is a graduate of the University of Uppsala. Together with Rafael López Pintor she served as lead writer and editor for IDEA’s Voter Turnout since 1945: A Global Report (2002) and Voter Turnout in Western Europe: A Regional Report (2004). And Engaging the Electorate: Initiatives to Promote Voter Turnout from Around the World (2006). Web page: http://www.idea.int/about/who/mariag.cfm 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.