Non-Resident Fellows

George Anderson advises the UN and various NGOs on constitutional transitions. Fellow, Centre on Democracy and Diversity, Queen’s University. Former Deputy Minister in Government of Canada, former President and CEO of the Forum of Federations, and former member of stand-by team of the Mediation Support Unit, United Nations. Has worked in some 30 countries. Educated at Queen’s, Oxford and École Nationale d’Administration, Paris. Past fellow at Harvard and New York University. Author of Federalism: An Introduction (OUP, 2008) and Fiscal Federalism: An Introduction (OUP, 2010), translated into 23 and 13 languages respectively, with the former having over 100,000 copies in print. Editor of Oil and Gas in Federal Systems (OUP, 2012) and Internal Markets and Multilevel Governance (OUP, 2012). Co-editor of Federal Rivers (Edward Elgar, 2014) and Territory and Power in Constitutional Transitions (OUP, 2019).

Prof Jaap de Visser is the South African Research Chair in Multilevel Government, Law and Development at the Dullah Omar Institute, University of the Western Cape (Cape Town). His research, teaching and consulting focuses on multilevel government, local government, decentralisation and (fiscal) federalism in Africa and beyond. He has overseen and conducted research as well as training on multilevel government in South Africa, Mozambique, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya and has consulted for many international organisations, including the Worldbank, UNHABITAT, UNDP, USAID, and GIZ. He is co-convenor of a Masters in Law, State & Multilevel Government, a Postgraduate Diploma in Local Government and the annual African School for Decentralisation at the University of the Western Cape. Prof De Visser is the Vice-President of the International Association of Centres for Federal Studies.

Bio and CV on the Dullah Omar Institute’s website: https://dullahomarinstitute.org.za/about-us/our-people/sarchi-chair-in-multilevel-government-law-and-policy/prof-jaap-de-visser)

Dr. Alan Fenna is Professor of Politics at The John Curtin Institute of Public Policy, Curtin University, Western Australia. He specialises in Australian and comparative federalism as well as public policy. He is co-author of Comparative Federalism: a systematic inquiry, 2nd edn (2015) and Interrogating Public Policy Theory: a political values perspective (2019); co-editor of Australian Government and Politics (2021); and author or co-author of a range of book chapters and journal articles. He worked in the Federal Affairs division of the Department of Premier and Cabinet of the Government of Western Australia; was an elected member of local government; and served as President of the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA) 2009–2010.

Christine Forster is a Professor and the Associate Dean International at the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Christine specialises in gender equality and women’s human rights with a particular interest in federalism and gender, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), sex discrimination law, and violence against women she has published widely in these areas. In 2020 Routledge published her co-authored book with Dr Jaya Sagade of the ILS Law College, Pune, India Women’s Human Rights in India and in 2021 her co-authored book Sex as a Protected Ground in International and Domestic Law with Professor Vedna Jivan was published by Brill.  Christine also has extensive practical experience delivering gender equality training in South East Asia and India, particularly in the area of gender equality and federalism. Christine also annually travels with 20 students from her law school in Sydney to join 20 Indian students in the classroom at the ILS Law College in Pune, India where she co-teaches the course ‘Women, Gender and Law’.

Laurenne Garneau provides technical expertise in support to the Forum’s team in Myanmar. Laurenne brings decades of experience in international cooperation as a former Government of Canada’s professional. As a Canadian diplomat, she worked closely with foreign government representatives including two years in Myanmar on governance, economic development and gender equality issues; three years in the Philippines on local governance and women’s economic empowerment; and four years in Indonesia on environmental and natural resources governance in the context of decentralization. Laurenne’s experience includes more than 10 years in gender equality research, policy development and provision of technical advice. She is a member of the International Association for Feminist Economics and the Quebec-based Femmes, Politique, Démocratie. She holds a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in Economics from Université du Québec à Montréal.

Amit Gupta was an Associate Professor at the United States Air Force War College. His research has focused on international security issues, demography, and popular culture and politics. His articles have been published in Orbis, Asian Survey, Security Dialogue, Prism, The International Journal of the History of Sport, and The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs. He has written a research report for the Forum on Reintegrating Armed Groups in Yemen.

John Kincaid is the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service and Director of the Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania; an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration; and recipient of Distinguished Scholar Awards from the American Political Science Association, American Society of Public Administration, and International Political Science Association. He served as Senior Editor of the Global Dialogue on Federalism, a joint project of the Forum of Federations and International Association of Centers for Federal Studies (2001-2015); Editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism (1981-2006); and Executive Director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Washington, D.C. (1988-1994). He has written various works on federalism and intergovernmental relations and, recently, edited A Research Agenda for Federalism Studies (Elgar 2019) and co-edited Courts in Federal Countries: Federalists or Unitarists? (Toronto 2017).

Mario Kölling is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Spanish National Distance Education University (UNED) and a Senior Researcher at the Fundación Manuel Giménez Abad, Spain. From 2011 to 2014, he held the García Pelayo Fellowship at the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales in Madrid.

His research focuses on territorial decentralization, multilevel governance, and the evolution of the EU budget. He has actively contributed to a number of research initiatives led by the Forum, including Water Management in Federal Countries, Public Security in Federal Polities, and Digital Transformations in Federations. He has also been involved in the project Strengthening Federalism and Inclusive Governance in Myanmar.

Dr. Sabine Kropp is Professor of German Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. She specialises on comparative federalism and public policy, with an emphasis on Germany and post-Soviet countries. She is co-editor of Emerging Federal Structures in the Post-Cold War Era (2022); Accommodation of Regional and Ethno-cultural Diversity in Ukraine (2021); and Ten years of federalism reform in Germany (Special Issue of Regional and Federal Studies (2016), and published numerous articles and book chapters. She worked as chief of staff of the Minister of Housing and Transport (State Government of Saxony-Anhalt) and has served as an advisor to state parliaments, governments and courts.

André Lecours is full Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. His main research interests are Canadian politics, European politics, nationalism (with a focus on Quebec, Scotland, Flanders, Catalonia and the Basque country) and federalism. He is the editor of New Institutionalism. Theory and Analysis published by the University of Toronto Press in 2005, the author of Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State (University of Nevada Press, 2007), and the co-author (with Daniel Béland) of Nationalism and Social Policy. The Politics of Territorial Solidarity (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Francis Kok-Wah Loh, a Malaysian, was Professor of Politics in Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang until his retirement in 2012. He has been a Visiting Scholar/Research Fellow at Monash and Melbourne Universities in Australia, in Kyoto University, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He has won research grants awarded by the Swedish International Development Agency (1996-2002), The Ford Foundation (2005-2008), and served as Director of the Regional Workshop of the Asian Public Intellectual Fellowship Program (Nippon Foundation) in 2010-11. He has consulted for the UNDP, the UNRISD and the Penang State Government. He has been associated with the Forum since 2005: he contributed articles to two volumes of the Global Dialogue on Federalism; hosted and facilitated the ‘South and Southeast Asian Regional Meeting on Service Delivery’ in Penang (Nov 2012); and has been involved in the Myanmar Project for Federalism and Inclusive Governance since 2012. Francis is also closely associated with Aliran, a multiethnic human rights organisation based in Penang. He was Secretary for 20-odd years and President from 2011-2016. He received his BA (summa cum laude) from Dartmouth College (1974) and his PhD in Political Science and Southeast Asian Studies from Cornell University (1980). He has published several books and many articles on Malaysian and Southeast Asian politics.

Neophytos Loizides is Professor in International Conflict Analysis at the University of Kent and the Director of the Conflict Analysis Research Centre (CARC). He has previously taught at Queen’s University Belfast and Princeton University and held  fellowships at the University of Essex and the Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on political institution building within violently divided societies, power-sharing and other formal or informal mechanisms aiming to mitigate protracted disputes. Professor Loizides is the author of The Politics of Majority Nationalism: Framing Peace, Stalemates, and Crises, Designing Peace: Cyprus and Institutional Innovations in Divided Societies, and Mediating Power-Sharing (with Feargal Cochrane and Thibaud Bodson). He has authored more than forty academic articles and book chapters in the areas of conflict regulation, forced displacement and political accommodation in deeply divided societies including most recently work published in the European Journal of Political Research, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Political Psychology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and International Migration.  He has also consulted various governmental bodies and international organizations including the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States and has contributed commentaries to international media such as the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Rekha Saxena teaches at the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. She has published over eleven books. Her recent publications include: Varieties of Federal Governance: Major Contemporary Models, Foundation: Cambridge University Press, India (2010), Mapping Canadian Federalism for India, Konark (2002), Situating Federalism: Mechanisms of Intergovernmental Relations in Canada and India, Manohar (2006), India at the Polls: Parliamentary Elections in the Federal Phase, Orient Longman (2003), Indian Politics: Constitutional Design and Institutional Functioning, Prentice Hall India (2011), Federalizing India in the Age of Globalization, Primus (2013), Indian Judiciary :the changing Landscape, Manohar (2007) and Indian Parliament: The Changing Landscape, Manohar (2014).

Dr Johanna Schnabel is a Lecturer and Researcher at the Chair of German Politics, Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and was a postdoctoral researcher and Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. Her research largely focuses on intergovernmental relations and public policy in federal and decentralized countries. She has published widely on the management of fiscal and public health crises and the coordination of public policymaking and is the author of « Managing Interdependencies in Federal Systems. Intergovernmental Councils and the Making of Public Policy » (Palgrave, 2020). She is a board member of the Research Committee on Comparative Federalism and Multilevel Governance of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and the co-chair of the federalism network of the German Political Science Association (DVPW).

Leslie Seidle is a public policy consultant based in Montreal and a senior advisor with the Forum of Federations. He directs the research program Canada’s Changing Federal Community for the Institute for Research on Public Policy. He previously held a number of senior positions in the Government of Canada, including director general of Strategic Policy and Research, Intergovernmental Affairs in the Privy Council Office. He is the author of Rethinking the Delivery of Public Services to Citizens (1995) and numerous articles on immigration, federalism, constitutional reform, public management and electoral reform. Dr. Seidle has edited/co-edited 13 books, including Immigrant Integration in Federal Countries (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012) and Belonging? Diversity, Recognition and Shared Citizenship in Canada (IRPP, 2007).

Sandeep Shastri is the Vice Chancellor of Jagran Lakecity University, Bhopal, India. He was earlier Pro Vice Chancellor of Jain University and Director of its Centre for Research in Social Science and Education (CERSSE) (2009-2020). Prior to that he was on the Faculty of the Department of Political Science, Bangalore University (1984-2004) and headed the Social Science Research Centre and Teacher Training Academy of the Jain Group of Institutions (2004-2009). He is currently the National Coordinator of the Lokniti Network a group of scholars involved in Survey based Election Studies in India. He was a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar (1993), Participant in the International Visitor (IV) Program (1995), Shastri Indo-Canadian Fellow (1999), Ford Foundation South-South Fellow (2001), Adjunct Professor, University of California, Berkeley. He has been actively involved in the Forum of Federations projects in Nepal, Sudan, South Sudan and Myanmar.

Enid Slack is the Director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG) at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Enid works on municipal finance and governance issues for agencies such as the Forum of Federations, World Bank, International Growth Centre, UN Habitat, Asian Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank in countries that include Brazil, China, Chile, Colombia, India, Mexico, Mongolia, the Philippines, and South Africa. She has written numerous books and articles on property taxes, intergovernmental transfers, and municipal infrastructure finance. She co-edited two books for the Forum – one on Finance and Governance of Capital Cities in Federal Systems and the other on Governance and Finance of Metropolitan Areas in Federal Systems. In 2012, Enid was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Jason Tabarias is an expert in public policy, public administration and economics with a background in consulting, government and academia.

Jason has held senior leadership roles in top-tier strategy, policy and economics consulting firms where he focused on supporting governments’ biggest challenges in social, economic and environmental policy. Jason’s is Director of Economic Impact at Accenture Strategy in Australia, and has previously worked for Deloitte in New Zealand and PwC in the United Kingdom.

Jason has also held senior roles in government in Australia and New Zealand. Jason was previously an executive in Department of the Premier and Cabinet Victoria (Australia) in both the Intergovernmental Relations and Public Sector Reform and Performance branches, as well as being the Director for Taskforces on the Reform of Australia’s Federation and Reform of Australia’s Taxation System. Jason was also a senior advisor at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, New Zealand where he led on citizen and data-centred approaches to policy development.

Jason was previously an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) where he taught public policy and economics in graduate and professional programmes. Jason holds a Masters of Economics from Victoria University, Wellington.

Zemelak Ayele is a former director and associate professor at the Centre for Federal and Governance Studies (CFGS) of Addis Ababa University (AAU) and a research fellow at the Dullah Omar Institute of the University of the Western Cape (UWC).

With Prof Jaap de Visser, the South African Research Chair (SARCHi) for Multilevel Government, Dr Ayele co-convenes the African School on Decentralisation (ASD).

He is currently serving as a senior political advisor at the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD-Ethiopia).

Dr Ayele received LL.B from Addis Ababa University, an Advanced Diploma in Federalism from the Institute of Federalism, Fribourg University, and LL.M and LL.D from the UWC.

He has widely published in the areas of decentralisation, federalism, and electoral democracy in Ethiopia and Africa.