Advisory Group

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.

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.

Mayne is Ford Foundation Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Faculty Co-Chair for Curriculum and Research at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. His research interests include comparative political behavior, democratic representation, subnational and urban politics, and social policy.

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.

Tomila’s research focuses on comparative democracy and authoritarianism, mass protests and historical patterns of human capital and democratic reproduction in Russia and other states. She is currently working on a book on the long-term patterns of reproduction of social structures in Russia and why this matter for democracy, development, and social inequalities.

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.

Valeria is a Reader in Public Policy and Politics, at De Montfort University, UK. S. Her research focus has been on local politics, citizen participation, governance, collaboration, partnership and Latin America. She has been able to study these topics within the English and Welsh contexts and in Mexico and Latin America. She has done studies on the impact that structural economic changes and institutional socio-political reforms have on local governance. Also, democratic principles such as inclusion and accountability have also an area of interest, particularly how these concepts and meanings affect the organisational structures of local government as well as the practices and behaviour of local government bureaucrats.