Paper Presenters
Michael R.M. Abrigo is Research Specialist (on study leave) at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) and graduate student at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UH). As Research Specialist at PIDS, he has been involved on research in education, health, labor mobility, population, firm productivity, trade, and spatial issues. Mr. Abrigo holds a BA in Development Studies (magna cum laude) and Master of Statistics degrees from the University of the Philippines. He is currently a PhD in Economics student and Graduate Assistant at UH.
An Yongkang is currently a PhD candidate at Sutherland School of Law, UCD, Ireland. Her research interests lies in regulation and food safety regulation, in particular in the United Kingdom, Germany, and P.R.China. Previously she studied at Nankai Univeristy, China and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Law and Master’s Degree in Constitutional and Administrative Law there.
Prakash Bhattarai is a PhD candidate in Peace and Conflict Studies at University of Otago, New Zealand. His PhD research focuses on assessing the coordination dynamics of third-party intervention in conflict-affected countries. Prakash was also a visiting PhD scholar (April-June 2013) at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. Prakash also holds an MA degree in Population Studies from the Tribhuvan University, Nepal in 2005 and another MA degree in Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame, USA in 2010. Prakash also has a decade of professional and leadership experiences on issues around youth, human rights, peacebuilding, and migration, and has worked with a number of organizations including, Search for Common Ground, Catholic Relief Service, Danish Association for International Cooperation, Youth Action Nepal, and Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC-Nepal).
Pakarang Chuenjit is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political science at Chulalongkorn University. She is also a fellow at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, United States of America. Pakarang earned a bachelor’s degree in public administration at Chulalongkorn University. Her research interests lie in the area of public finance, taxation and public budgeting with a focus on the culture of taxation.
Mehmet Akif Demircioglu is a PhD student in Public Affairs, majoring in Public Management and Public Policy Analysis at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University-Bloomington. His minor fields are Political Science, Strategic Management & Organization Theory, and Sociology. He teaches organizational behavior course at SPEA. He has a BS in Political Science and Public Administration from Turkey (2006) and an MPA degree with concentrations in International & Comparative Affairs and Public Management from SPEA (2009). Previously, he worked in the Urban Institute (2011) and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2009) in Washington DC, Strategic Policy Planning and Coordination Division in the Seoul Metropolitan Government in South Korea (2010), and in Turkey's Office of Personnel Management (2010).
Katrin Dribbisch is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Potsdam where she joined the Research Training Group "Wicked Problems, Contested Administrations: Knowledge, Coordination, Strategy" (WIPCAD) in October 2012. In her PhD she focuses on public sector innovation. Her dissertation topic is "Innovation by Design? The organizational adoption of design-led innovation in public administrations". Hence, she is exploring how design thinking as an innovation approach is implemented and applied by public administrations in Australia, Singapore and Denmark. Katrin studied Political Science in Berlin and Warsaw (Poland) and received her Diploma in 2010. She also completed a postgraduate program in Design Thinking at the HPI School of Design Thinking. Following her studies she co-founded the innovation consultancy inventedhere and worked as a Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center Berlin. In 2011 Katrin together with three co-founders started Service Design Berlin, a professional community for service design.
Kris Hartley is a Singapore-based researcher and consultant focusing on economic development, public policy, and urbanization. With nearly a decade of public and private sector experience, he has consulted on a variety of topics including earthquake recovery, financial regulation, infrastructure asset management, and nuclear energy policy. Working on solutions with high economic and social impact, Kris is currently conducting research about urban revitalization and cultural preservation in Singapore and Hong Kong, provincial governance and economic competitiveness in Vietnam, and industrial estate development in Thailand. Kris is also a Ph.D. candidate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, where he holds the President’s Graduate Fellowship. His education includes a Master of City Planning in Economic Development from the University of California, Berkeley, an MBA with a focus in International Management from Baylor University, and a BA in Classics from the University of Tennessee.
Hong Bei is a full-time teaching assistant, part-time research PhD student in National University of Singapore, Department of Economics. She is set to get the degree of doctor of philosophy in economic in this coming July with the thesis “Government Policies in R&D Based Models”. Her research interest covers mainly Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics, Technological Change and Public Economics. Her teaching interest is Microeconomic Analysis, Growth Theory, Public Economics, and Mathematical Economics.
Daniel H. Katz is a PhD candidate in Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. His research focus is defense diplomacy. He holds a BA from Yale University in International Studies and Classics (Latin) and a double MSc degree in International Affairs (Merit) from the London School of Economics and Peking University. He has previously worked at the Center for a New American Security, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, the International Institute for Strategic Studies-Asia and the U.S. Department of State.
Sanju Koirala is from Nepal and is currently enrolled as a PhD candidate in Human Geography at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Prior to this, she completed an MA in Regional Development Planning and Management as well as a BA in Development Studies, both in Nepal. Sanju has also worked with several development organisations in Nepal, including the UNDP-backed Micro-Enterprise Development Programme and the Public-Private Partnerships for Urban Environment project. Later she joined Caritas Nepal development as a programme assistant for the Small Development Initiative Programme. She also worked with the Social Science Baha as a ‘critical thinking programme officer’ and ‘youth programme officer’.
Ismoil Khujamkulov is a PhD candidate in the School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the Carleton University, Canada. His research interests include fiscal policy in developing and transitional countries, particularly, public finance management (PFM), public budgeting, tax administration and tax policy. He is interested in development agenda for Central Asia and effectiveness of foreign aid, too.
Li Ni is a second year PhD student in Public Administration from School of Government, Sun Yat-Sen University (China). Her research interests are focused on local government administration and government reform.
Jens Marquardt graduated in political science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Freie Universität Berlin in 2010. Since 2012 he is conduction research for his PhD thesis about renewable energy support and multi-level governance in Southeast Asia, supported by the German Environmental Foundation (DBU) scholarship program. Further work experiences include the Environmental Policy Research Centre in Berlin, the Center for Sustainability Management in Lüneburg and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Manila. His research priorities are energy policy, transition management and multi-level governance with a dedicated focus on Southeast Asia. His research brought him to Indonesia and the Philippines.
JC Martel and Kristin Olofsson are first-year students in the PhD in Public Affairs program at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs. Both are research assistants with the Workshop on Policy Process Research and recipients of fellowships for a National Science Foundation grant, “Developing Low-Carbon Cities in the US, China, and India Through Integration Across Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Social Sciences, and Public Health”. The grant supports a project exploring transformations in coupled technological, infrastructural, and social sub-systems to help urban areas, primarily in Asia, realize low-carbon, resource-efficient outcomes. During summer 2013, JC and Kristin travelled to India to collaborate with researchers and students from six US institutions, five partner institutions in India and three partner institutions in China. JC holds a B.Sc. in Urban Studies and a Master in Public Administration. Kristin holds a B.A. in Political Science and an M.Sc. in Development Studies.
Aditya Perdana is PhD candidate in politics at the Graduate School Faculty of Economics and Social Science Universitaet Hamburg Germany. Now, he is finishing his doctoral dissertation about the relationship of women’s civil society organizations (CSOs) and political parties in post-Suharto Indonesia. His doctoral project is funded by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). He also serves as lecturer at the Department of Political Science Faculty of Social and Political Sciences University of Indonesia. He can be reached at [email protected].
Divya Guru Rajan is a Ph.D candidate in Public Policy at Duke University.
Ek-hong Ljavakaw Sia is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen, Germany and a research fellow of European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan.
Shyam Singh is an Assistant Professor in Social Sciences at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), Gujarat, India. He joined the institute in July 2013. He has recently completed his Ph.D. in Political Science from the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore. The PhD was awarded in 2013. In his PhD, he carried out a research on the politics of social policies in Uttar Pradesh state of India. His research interests include: governance and development, politics of public policy, social policy, social exclusion and caste and village politics.
Tian Tang is a PhD candidate in Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and expect to complete her degree in May 2016. Before coming to the PhD program, she completed a B.A. degree with a double major in law and economics, and a master’s degree in public management from Tsinghua University in China. Her primary areas of interest include climate change and energy policy, technology policy, and collaborative governance. With previous research experience in China and the United States, her research focuses on examining the impacts of energy policies on the development and deployment of renewable energy technologies in these two countries, and analyzing how these policies have driven the technological changes. Given the different institutional contexts between China and the US, she is particularly interested in exploring how energy policies interplay with relevant actors in the electricity sector in different institutional settings to promote renewable energies.
Belinda Thompson is a PhD Scholar with the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. She was awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award in 2013 to commence her studies. Her thesis will explore the operation of non-government, not-for-profit hospitals and large clinics in developing countries. Her aim is that this research will have a tangible, practical impact on this area of health policy. Belinda serves on the Strategic Engagement and Research Committees at the Crawford School. She has been published in Advance, produced by the Crawford School of Public Policy. Her work has also featured in online media. In 2013, Belinda was a College of Asia and the Pacific finalist for the Three- Minute Thesis competition. Belinda presented her initial work at the 2014 Australasian Aid and International Development Workshop.
Weng Shihong is a PhD at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIRPA), Fudan University. He is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Global Politics, Freie Universität Berlin, since September 2011. His dissertation is on "The Influence of the NPOs on the Basic Educational Aid in China: From a Holistic Governance Perspective". His major research fields include: Global Governance, Public Education Policy, and NPOs.
Lili Wu received her B.A. in Public Administration from Shanghai Ocean University in 2006 and M.A. in International Relations from Fudan University in Shanghai. She is currently a PhD candidate in International Relations, University of Macau, and a visiting scholar to American University Center for Asian Studies, where she conducts interviews and research for her dissertation entitled Managing the Contradictions of China’s Transformative Diplomacy: proactive behaviors and conservative strategy. Previously she was an exchange student at Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and has actively participated in academic events and research projects in Shanghai, Macau and Washington DC. Her research interests focus on Chinese Foreign Policy, East Asia Politics and security affairs, China-US relations. She has published two articles in these areas.
Humairah Zainal is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Humairah obtained her Master of Arts in Southeast Asian Studies from National University of Singapore (NUS) and Australian National University (ANU) under a Joint Masters Programme. Humairah’s research interests are in the areas of Malay films, socio-cultural history of the Malays, as well as Malay cultural and intellectual development. Her research papers have been accepted for presentation at many international conferences, including the International Conference on State Policy and the Cultural Politics of Heritage-Making in East and Southeast Asia held at Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore in January 2014, and the International Journal of Arts and Sciences International Conference (IJAS) at Harvard University in May 2012.
Edson Ziso is a PhD student in the School of History and Politics, University of Adelaide, South Australia. He is a holder of a MA Development Studies and a MA Public Policy (specialisation in International Political Economy) degree. He was a member of the Teaching Staff in the History & Development Studies Department of the Midlands State University (Zimbabwe) for 3 years and also worked as a Community Development practitioner for Plan International. His current thesis focuses on the international political economy of Chinese and Indian-led Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in sub-Saharan Africa. His research interests centre on political economy, international relations, global governance as well as Asia-African co-operation in particular and South-South co-operation in general.
Vera C. Zuo is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, specializing in comparative political economy, Chinese politics, and political methodology. She has an M.A. in political science from University of Wisconsin–Madison and an LL.M and an LL.B in political science and a B.A. in Economics, both from Peking University. She has a forthcoming article on subnational comparative case studies in comparative politics and Chinese politics in the European Political Science Review. She has presented her research at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting. During her research assistantship at the Research Center for Contemporary China at Peking University, she administered different components of six probability-sample surveys in China these include the mainland China components of the World Values Survey and the Asia Barometer Survey.