Simeon, Richard

Richard Simeon

Professor of Political Science and Law, University of Toronto

Education:

Dr. Simeon is a graduate of the University of British Columbia (1964). He received his PhD in Political Science from Yale University (1968).

Professional experience:

Prior to joining the University of Toronto in 1991, Richard Simeon was Professor of Political Studies at Queen's University where he was also Director of the School of Public Administration (1985-91) and of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations (1976-83). In July 2004 Mr. Simeon was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC).

He was Vice-Chair of the Ontario Law Reform Commission from 1989 to 1995. From 1983 to 1985, he was a Research Coordinator for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Canada's Development Prospects --the Macdonald Commission. He also served as a member of the Ontario Advisory Committee on Confederation, from 1977-82, and in 1990 was a member of an advisory group to the Premier on the Constitution.

Mr Simeon has had visiting appointments at UBC, University of Essex, McMaster University and the University of Cape Town. In 1998 he was William Lyon McKenzie King Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University, a position he will hold again in 2006-7. Professor Simeon's primary interests and writings have been on Federalism, Public Policy and the Constitution in Canada, together with a larger interest in the interactions between state and society in advanced western nations. More recently, Dr. Simeon has explored broader issues in contemporary governance. His current work focuses on federalism, democracy, and constitutionalism in divided societies.

Since the adoption of the democratic constitution in South Africa in 1996, Richard Simeon has closely followed the process of democratic consolidation and institutional capacity building there. In 1997 and 1999, he co-taught a course in the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, analyzing the constitution comparatively.

Other:

Mr Simeon’s latest work includes Rethinking Federalism: Citizens, Markets and Governments in a Changing World (1995), co-edited with Karen Knop, Sylvia Ostry and Katherine Swinton; Degrees of Difference: Canada and the United States in a Changing World, with Keith Banting and George Hoberg (1997); Political Science and Canadian Federalism: Seven Decades of Scholarly Engagement (2002) and Canadian Federalism: Seven Decades of Scholarly Engagement (2002). His 1972 book Federal-Provincial Diplomacy was awarded the Martha Derthick Prize for ' a book that has made a lasting contribution to the study of federalism and intergovernmental relations' by the American Political Science Association in 2005.