Our Advisory Group of Swedish and international researchers enables ICLD to stay up to date with, and disseminate, the latest research and knowledge in the fields of local democracy and decentralisation. The members are presented below.
Ana Maria Vargas, Research Director Swedish International Centre for Local Democracy (Moderator) Ana Maria Vargas Falla
PhD in Sociology of Law, Senor Lecturer and Director of Studies at Lunds University
Ana Maria is a Colombian scholar based in Sweden whose work centres on the everyday political engagement of marginalised communities within local governance. Her work examines the interaction between the everyday political engagement of marginalised groups and local government responses, for example how long-standing struggles by residents of informal settlements can lead to official recognition and the securing of housing rights. Her award-winning PhD research in Sweden examined the role of urban planning in enhancing the well-being of marginalised groups, including street vendors and rickshaw drivers. She has also conducted extensive research on legal pluralism in local governance in Uganda and Tanzania, and more recently on climate adaptation policies that respond to the needs of marginalised communities living in informal settlements. She has led and contributed to projects on gender social norms and social change labs for gender equality in Colombia and Guatemala, and has developed policy labs on nature-based solutions with municipalities across Europe to test new approaches to co-governance.
Ana Maria is deeply committed to participatory approaches in both research and policymaking and to fostering innovation through the exchange of experiences among local governments. At the heart of her work is a commitment to making visible the everyday resistance of marginalised communities and recognising these practices as vital expressions of political engagement.
Her publications can be found here: https://www.soclaw.lu.se/en/ana-maria-vargas-falla
Winnie V. Mitullah
Winnie is the current Director and Associate Research Professor of Development Studies at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), and the Director of Gender Affairs, University of Nairobi, with which ICLD has an MoU. She holds a PhD in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of York, UK. Her PhD thesis was on Urban Housing, with a major focus on policies relating to low-income housing. Winnie is also a well-cited scholar with a long list of relevant publications related to local governance, democracy and urban marginalised groups. She is also the chair of the University of Nairobi UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks.
Jesse C. Ribot
Before starting at AU August 2018, Jesse spent a decade as a professor of Geography, Anthropology and Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and Director of the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy Initiative at the University of Illinois. He has also worked for numerous development agencies, such as World Bank and United Nations. His research focuses on decentralization and democratic local government, natural resource tenure and access, distribution along natural resource commodity chains and household vulnerability in the face of climate and environmental change.
Anders Lidström
His research focuses on local politics and government, comparative politics and education policy. This includes studies of local democracy and self-government, and political participation in city-regions, both within Sweden and in a comparative perspective. He has also carried out research on education policy, with a particular focus on how this is shaped at the local level.
Amalinda Savirani
Amalinda is a Professor of Political Science and Head of Department Politics and Government at Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia. Her PhD research focused on the political behaviour of business actors responding to political shifts and neoliberalism in Pekalongan, Central Java, in Sociology and Anthropology. Her research interests include studies of social movements in the urban sector and labour with political economy.
Quinton Mayne
Quinton Mayne is Associate Professor of Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. His dissertation, entitled The Satisfied Citizen: Participation, Influence, and Public Perceptions of Democratic Performance, won the American Political Science Association’s 2011 Ernst B. Haas Best Dissertation Award in European Politics as well as the 2011 Best Dissertation Award in Urban Politics. Mayne’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of comparative and urban politics. He is particularly interested in how the design and reform of democratic political institutions affects how citizens think and act politically.
Sten Hagberg. Photo: David Naylor, Uppsala universitet. Sten Hagberg
Sten is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology and director of the Forum for African Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. His PhD research focused on dispute settlement between farmers and herders in Burkina. He has conducted anthropological research in Burkina Faso since 1988 and in Mali since 2008 covering themes including dispute settlement, local politics, environment, development, democracy and social movements. His research nowadays focuses on political culture, municipal democracy, local development, the mass media, security and popular struggle.
