Jörg Broschek will join the department on July 1, 2013, as a CRC Tier II chair in federalism and globalization. Jörg holds a PhD in political science from the University of Augsburg in Germany and has most recently been Assistant Professor in the Institute of Political Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, also in Germany.
     Relocating to Canada with his family obviously has been a big decision for Jörg, but it is certainly not a step into unknown territory since he recently published a 389pp. monograph on Canadian federalism. He also has already cooperated with another member of our department, Thomas O. Hueglin, who contributed a chapter to a book on dynamics and change in federal systems co-edited by Jörg and the director of the Darmstadt Institute, Arthur Benz.
     Jörg comes to us with an already very impressive pedigree of academic excellence. Apart from the two books already mentioned, he has published eight articles in refereed journals and eleven book chapters. He also brings to the department a new methodological approach, historical institutionalism, which seeks to analyse and explain the development and stability or instability of political institutions as a combination of path-dependent continuity and interruptive critical junctures.

John Grundy joined the Department of Political Science this past fall as a SSHRC Postdoctoral Researcher working with Rianne Mahon. John defended his PhD with distinction last fall, in Political Science at York University. His areas of expertise are Canadian politics, public administration and social and labour market policy. His dissertation, which he is currently turning into a book, uses a governmentality lens to explore the delivery of Canadian employment services for the unemployed. John is also involved in collaborative work with researchers and community legal workers on a study of the enforcement of employment standards for Ontarians in precarious jobs. He is also working on a co-authored paper exploring options for strengthening employment standards, to be presented at the International Labour Organization's "Regulating for Decent Work" Conference in Geneva.
     John enjoyed his first year in the Department of Political Science and looks forward to the upcoming academic year. He really appreciates the Department's openness to a diversity of approaches to studying politics and the remarkable collegiately among the faculty, administrators and students, which made his transition to postdoctoral studies a pleasure. He looks forward to meeting more researchers in the broader WLU and BISA community.