Sharon Sutherland
Mid-Career Summary

This web site is primarily for the former students, colleagues and clients who lose me from time to time. I am easily lost because year after year, I fail to get my name and number printed in the residential telephone directory. The present career summary is for those who don't know me or my work, but who might find some of it useful and let me know about their own or other researchers' related work.

I am continuing into my third year at the University of Ottawa's School of Political Studies as a Visiting or "Invited" professor and adjunct research professor. Before that, I had a rewarding two years as a faculty member at Queen’s University in Kingston, at the School of Public Policy, where I am still a Fellow.

I did the B.A. and Master’s degrees at the University of Alberta at Edmonton, and the doctorate at the University of Essex in England. My earlier academic jobs as a full-time faculty member were at the University of Essex (Government), Dalhousie University (Political Science and Public Administration), and at Carleton University (Public Administration and Political Science).

My research interests include democratic theory, representative institutions, ministerial responsibility in Westminster systems, parliamentary scrutiny and state audit, management practices as implicit public policy, and the ethics of public office holding. In recognition of my work on government, I was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1995.

At the start of my career, I published a survey-based book on attitudes and political engagement among student activists, plus a number of empirical articles with Eric Tanenbaum, all this work challenging the then-received wisdom about the anti-democratic political attitudes of mass publics.

(Miscellany of Photographs © 2007, S. L. Sutherland)