Parallel session
COVID-19 and democracy

Rachel Gisselquist | Chair

Rachel M. Gisselquist, a political scientist, is a Senior Research Fellow with the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and a member of the institute’s senior management team. She works on the politics of developing countries, with particular attention to inequality, ethnic politics, statebuilding and governance and the role of aid therein, democracy and democratization, and sub-Saharan African politics.

Joseph Asunka | Presenter

Joseph Asunka is the CEO of Afrobarometer. He was previously Program Officer in the Global Development and Population program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where he managed a portfolio of grants that support efforts to increase transparency and accountability in fiscal governance and foster citizen participation to improve public services in developing countries. Before joining Hewlett, Joseph was a lecturer in political science at University of California, Los Angeles.

Nic Cheeseman | Presenter

Nic Cheeseman is Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham and was formerly the Director of the African Studies Centre at Oxford University. He mainly works on democracy, elections and development and has conducted in-country research in a range of African countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, but has also published on Latin America and post-communist Europe.

Julia Leininger | Presenter

Julia Leininger is Head of the department of Transformation of political (dis-)order at the German Development Institute. Her work areas cover political order and development, transformation of political regimes in sub-Saharan Africa, international Cooperation with sub-Saharan Africa, religion and politics, global governance/international organizations, and acting as regional coordinator sub-Saharan Africa.