Distinguished Research Fellows
Georgi Bliznashki
is immediate past Prime Minister of Bulgaria and that country’s leading constitutional scholar. He is a tenured professor in the law school at Sofia University, Bulgaria’s oldest and most important university. He is a former member of both the European and the Bulgarian parliaments and a highly cited scholar who is a frequent commentator in newspapers and on national and international radio and television regarding Bulgarian and European policy and politics.
Daniel Cravacuore
is director of the Master’s degree program in local government at the National University of Quilmes in Buenos Aires Provence, Argentina. He is internationally prominent as one of Latin America’s and Argentina’s leading scholar in the area of local government and governmental decentralization. He serves on numerous editorial boards and as an advisor to many of Latin America’s national municipal associations.
Victor Flecha
is the President of COPLANEA, a large non-governmental organization in Paraguay. He is that country’s leading social theorist, as well as a regular contributor to Paraguayan and Latin American newspapers. He has published extensively and lectured at many universities in Latin America and Europe.
Polya Katsamunska
is Vice Dean for International Studies and Professor of Public Administration at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia, Bulgaria. She is that country’s most internationally prominent public administration scholar and serves on the International Commission on the Accreditation of Public Administration Education and Training which was appointed by the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA) in Brussels, Belgium. She specializes in research on issues of government and civil service reform
Barbara Kudrycka
who is currently an elected member of the European Parliament, is one of Poland’s preeminent public administration scholars. She served for six years as Minister of Science and Higher Education in the Polish government and is credited with major achievements in the reform of Polish higher education and scientific research. Prior to that, she served as rector of a prominent Polish higher education institution. She has written extensively on issues of ethics and good governance.
Oscar Luengo
is Professor of Political Science at the University of Granada in Granada, Spain. He is Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies of the Iberoamerican Union of Municipalities and Chairperson of the Research Committee on Political Communication of the International Political Science Association and has been a visiting professor at a number of prominent US and Latin American universities, including the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses upon issues of administrative reform, local government and political parties
Natalya Kolisnichenko
Natalya Kolisnichenko, Professor, Regional Institute of Public Administration, Odessa, Ukraine. She has been a Visiting Researcher for the Institute for Public Administration and Community Services since 2005. She currently heads the Department for European Integration of the National Academy for Public Administration in Odessa, which reports to the Office of the President of Ukraine. She is an active member of the Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration of Eastern Europe. She obtained his doctorate in Public Administration from the National Academy, Odessa and has a specialization in foreign languages. She is fluent in English, Russian, Ukrainian and German.
Dan Tudor Lazar
Dr. Dan Tudor Lazar is a professor of public administration at the University of Babes Bolyi in Cluj, Romania, where he also received his doctorate. In 2005-2006, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Public Administration at FIU. He is also an international public finance researcher for the IPMCS. Professor Lazar is in charge of the relationship between the public administration programs of Babes Bolyi and FIU. Professor Lazar has written books such as Public Budget for the Decade of Information, Finance Management of Local Governments in Romania, and co-authored Public Administration Guide and Public Finance and Budgets. He has written several articles and academic papers.
