CARTSS-Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VISITING SCHOLAR

 

Rikke Berg Kjaer

 

 

I have been granted a sabbatical from Department of Political Science at University of Southern Denmark where I hold a position as Associate Professor. This has allowed me to spend the AY 2006/7 in the US, and I’m so fortunate to have been welcomed as visiting research scholar at CARTSS. Thus, until July 2007, I live in South Boulder together with my husband - and colleague! - Ulrik and our two children: Mads at 13 and Ida at 8.

 

My research interests are mainly within the field of local government studies. I received my Ph.D. in 1999 after having worked with my thesis on the roles of Danish politicians in local politics. Since then I have been working on different projects concerning public administration, the roles of elected and appointed officials and local democracy. One of the latest projects, recently finished, was a study of local government forms in western democracies (in cooperation with Professor Nirmala Rao, London). In US and Europe, most countries have been reforming their local government forms during the last 5-10 years. The project looked into the underlying motives of these reforms, together with the intended and unintended consequences, which was explored within a framework of six key aspects of new political executives: involvement of lay politicians; professionalism; coordination; political accountability; forms of political leadership; and recruitment of politicians.

 

At the moment I’m working on a project concerning local political leadership together with Ulrik Kjær, who is also a visiting scholar at CARTSS. We have done a survey with all Danish mayors, which has been a part of the comparative Polleader study including 17 European countries, and we have also done an extensive case-study of four Danish mayors. At the moment we are analyzing all the qualitative material and writing a book (in Danish) on Local Political Leadership – hopefully to be finished before the New Year. While at CARTSS, I also intent to use the Danish case study material for a contribution to a forthcoming American publication, comparing mayors across American (and a few European) cities. Further I plan to start a new (to me) field of research: the relations between local media and local politicians. However, I will also try to participate in seminars, meetings, brown bags etc. held at CARTSS and elsewhere at CU (especially the department of political science and the school of journalism and communication), which I hope will give me the opportunity to engage also in more informal discussions with faculty and students at the CU.

 

Please, don’t hesitate to contact me:

 

Phone: 720-240-1527

Email: berg@sam.sdu.dk

Web: http://www.sam.sdu.dk/staff/rbe