Country Hosts
Niraja Gopal Jayal
Niraja Gopal Jayal is a Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is the author of Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (1999); co-author of Drought, Policy and Politics in India (1993); and editor of Democracy in India (2001). Her current research interests include the Indian idea of citizenship; gender and governance; decentralisation; and environmental political theory. She is Director of the Ford Foundation project Dialogue on Democracy and Pluralism in South Asia.
Pratap Mehta
Pratap Mehta is President of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, India. Other positions he has held include: Professor of Government, Harvard University; Professor of Philosophy and Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; and Associate Professor of Government and of Social Studies, Harvard University. Dr.Mehta has published two books, as well as articles in reputed national and international journals.
Jeremy Seekings
Jeremy Seekings is Professor of Political Studies and Sociology at the University of Cape Town, and a Visiting Professor in the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale. His books include The UDF: A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983-1991 (2000), Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa (2005) and Growing Up In the New South Africa (2010). He is currently completing books on neoliberalism, social democracy and poverty in post-apartheid South Africa, and welfare state-building in the global South.
Maria Herminia Tavares de Almeida
Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida is Professor of Political Science at the University of São Paulo, teaching in the Undergraduate Program of International Relations, the Graduate Program of International Relations and the Graduate Program of Political Science. She has a Bachelor degree in Social Sciences (1969), a Ph.D. in Political Science (1979) from the University of São Paulo, and post- doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley (1984). She has done research on interest organizations, public policies and Brazilian political institutions. Her PHD dissertation – State and working classes in Brazil – is a study on the origins of labor policies and the corporatist system, in modern Brazil. Her book Economic Crisis and Organized Interests is a study on labor responses to stabilization policies, in Brazil during the 1980s. She published around 100 articles in academic journals and books, among which “Brazil - Privatization: reform through negotiation” and “Federalism and social policies in Brazil”. She has been Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London (1992); Tinker Visiting Professor, Stanford University (1996); Visiting Professor, Latin America Program, Ortega y Gasset Institute (1999, 2000 and 2002); Visiting Professor, Political Science Department, Université de Montréal (2006). She has served as member of the Latin American Studies Association’s Executive Committee (2001-2004), of the International Political Science Association’s Executive Committee (2006-2009) and as President of the Brazilian Political Science Association (2006- 2008). She is presently president of Latin American Studies Association, member of the Brazilian Institute Advisory Council, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. She holds the National Order of Scientific Merit (2006).
Nancy Bermeo
Nancy Bermeo received her PhD with distinction from Yale University and writes on regime change and the effects of systemic shocks on political behavior and institutions. She was a senior member of the Politics faculty at Princeton University before accepting the Nuffield Chair in Comparative Politics at Oxford University in 2007. She won the Stanley Kelley Teaching Prize at Princeton University in 1998 and the Oxford University Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009. Her articles have appeared in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Democracy, the Journal of Politics, and elsewhere. Her books include Continuity and Crisis: Popular Reactions to the Great Recession (ed. with Larry Bartels 2013) Coping with Crisis: Government Reactions to the Great Recession(ed. with Jonas Pontusson 2012) and Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times The Role of the Citizenry in the Breakdown of Democracy(Princeton University Press 2003) The last title won the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Democratization Section plus Choice Magazine’s Best Academic Title Award. She has served as the elected president of the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association and was recently elected President of the European Politics and Society Division of the American Political Science Association.