Seminar “Restarting the Process of Institutional Reform—In Earnest this Time?”

KULE RESEARCH PROJECT

GOVERNANCE TEAM

Seminar—Tuesday, 2 February 2016, 0830 to 1030

“Restarting the Process of Institutional Reform—In Earnest this Time?”

Education North 3-119

The lead researchers on the Kule Project on Democratic Reform of Government in Ukraine, invite you to attend and participate in the next in their series of seminars presenting results of research to date in their respective fields. Scholars in Ukraine will be participating by Skype or Clearsea. The Governance Team consists of:

• Bohdan Harasymiw (Team leader, CIUS,  University of Alberta) who will discuss Police Reform.

• Andreas Umland (Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, Kyiv) whose topic is Constitutional reform, i.e. a switch to full parliamentarianism

• David Marples (Chair, Department of History, U of A) who will present on Administrative decentralization.

• Linda Reif (Faculty of Law, U of A) whose topic is Ukraine’s national human rights institution (NHRI), the Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights.

• Ludmila Niemets and Konstantin Niemets (VN Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv) will present on Information monitoring of the [Kharkiv] region’s socio-economic development. 

Biographies of participants:

Bohdan Harasymiw is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Calgary, and Acting Coordinator, Contemporary Ukraine Studies Programme at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.  Born in Saskatchewan, he studied at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University (both in Kingston, Ontario) as well as at the University of Alberta, before completing his doctorate at the University of Toronto.  He joined the University of Calgary in 1969, where he continued teaching until his retirement in 2005.  Since retirement, he has participated as an election observer with the Canadian mission in Ukraine in 2006, 2007, and 2010.  In 1989-91, he was seconded to the federal government in Ottawa as a Strategic Analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Andreas Umland, CertTransl (Leipzig), AM (Stanford), MPhil (Oxford), DipPolSci, DrPhil (FU Berlin), PhD (Cambridge) has held fellow- or lectureships at Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Oxford, Urals State University, Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Catholic University of Eichstaett, and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Since 2014, he has been Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, Kyiv. He is a participant of the Valdai Discussion Club (valdaiclub.com/authors/22183.html), member of the academic advisory council of the European Integration Committee of the Parliament of Ukraine, co-editor of the web journal “Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul’tury” (www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forumruss.html) and general editor of the book series Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.” (www.ibidem-Verlag.de/spps.html).  Personal web site: ieac.academia.edu/AndreasUmland

David R. Marples is Distinguished University Professor and Head of the Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta. He is author of fourteen single-authored books and two edited books on topics ranging from Chernobyl to Stalinism in Ukraine, contemporary Belarus, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. His articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Europe-Asia Studies, Nationalities Papers, Eurasian Geography & Economics, Post-Soviet Affairs, and others. He is President of the North American Association of Belarusian Studies; and a board member of the Association for the Study of Nationalities and the Forum for Democracy in Belarus, German Marshall Fund of the United States. He is an editorial board member of ten journals, including Canadian Slavonic Papers (Associate Editor), Nationalities Papers (Associate Editor), and the Journal of Ukrainian Studies. At the University of Alberta, he was awarded the Faculty of Arts Research Prize for Full Professors in 1999; the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research (university research prize) in 2003; a Killam Annual Professorship in 2005-06; and the University Cup (the highest award) in 2008. In September 2006 he was promoted to the rank of Distinguished University Professor. His latest book, co-edited with Frederick V. Mills, is Ukraine’s Euromaidan: Analyses of a Civil Revolution in Ukraine (Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag and Columbia University Press).

Professor Linda C. Reif is CN Professor of International Trade at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta, Canada.  She obtained her LLB degree from the University of Windsor and her LLM from the University of Cambridge.  Professor Reif has published extensively on national human rights institutions (NHRIs), thematic human rights institutions and ombudsman institutions with publishers in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia.  Her publications include her 2004 book The Ombudsman, Good Governance and the International Human Rights System (Martinus Nijhoff, 2d ed in progress) and numerous law review articles and book chapters such as “The Future of Thematic Children’s Rights Institutions in a National Human Rights Institution World: The Paris Principles and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child” (2015) 37:2 Houston Journal of International Law 101; “Ombudsman Institutions and Article 33(2) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities” (2014) 65 University of New Brunswick Law Journal 213; and “The Shifting Boundaries of NHRI Definition in the International System” in R. Goodman and T. Pegram, eds., Human Rights, State Compliance, and Social Change: Assessing National Human Rights Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2012) 52. Professor Reif was Editor of Publications, International Ombudsman Institute (IOI) from 1989-2009 and has provided consulting services and academic support to organizations including the Commonwealth Secretariat, IOI and Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).

Ludmila Niemets graduated from Kharkiv State University in 1995 with a PhD on the constructive and geographic aspects of environmental education, including Ukraine’s transition within the model of national sustainable development. Earning the title of Professor in 2006, she was also awarded the Order of “Princess Olga”, the Third Class for outstanding achievements in Human Geography training. She has published about 300 scientific publications, including more than 10 monographs and been the head of the Department of Human Geography and Regional Studies in V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University since 2003. Subject Areas of Expertise: the sustainable development aspects, issues of the regional development, researches of demographic processes, the social sphere peculiarities, various issues of university education.

Konstantin Niemets graduated from Kharkiv State University and received a master’s degree in Hydrogeology, defending his PhD thesis on water permeability of fissured rocks ion 1979 and on the informational development of social and geographical systems in 2006. Konstantin, Professor since 2010, has the title “Excellence in Education of Ukraine”. Konstantin Niemets published about 200 research papers, including more than 10 monographs. His subject Areas of Expertise include the mathematical modeling of the regional development, spatial analysis, the regional development issues, monitoring of regional development, various aspects of higher education.