Sharon Sutherland
Mid-Career Summary

This web site is primarily made for the former colleagues, students and clients who I tend to confuse by changing both homes and institutions, and surely also by my chronic failure to get my name listed in the white pages. Worse, in the spring of 2008, we moved across the country to Victoria and into a house renovation, a spur-of-the-moment relocation of which I have not yet notified many valued colleagues.

Another impetus for the site is that my research preoccupations take me down the political accountability rabbit hole into the detail and complexities of the appropriateness of turning appointed officials into, alternatively, scapegoats or private politicians. These interests are not squarely shared by many political scientists or students of institutions or of public administration, although some tangents may strike a chord. Therefore I hope to encourage scholars who do share any of my concerns to let me know about their own or other relevant work.

I am now affiliated with the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria, where I benefit from perfect real-time colleagues. I deeply enjoyed and appreciated the previous three years at the University of Ottawa School of Political Studies. It was exciting to participate in the first teaching year of the new graduate programs in public opinion and policy, for which I developed a full-year doctoral course on epistemology, methodology and research design. 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.

 

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

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.

My very first solo article, published in Signs and titled “Why aren’t women the heroes?” is probably the most widely-cited piece I ever wrote, both in geographical interest and numbers of citations.

Parenthetically, apart from this piece and a few later book chapters, I have always published as S.L. Sutherland. For the first years, it was notably easier to be published as "S.L." and then I was stuck with it. I am sometimes asked if I know this other Sutherland.

During the past 25 years, I have taught a wide range of courses – mostly at graduate level – and mostly on comparative executives, Canadian government, democratic theory and accountability, philosophy of social science, research methods, ethics of public office holding, organizational behaviour and theory, strategic planning, and policy and program evaluation.

In 1988, the students in a course on ethics of public officials undertook a group project to produce the paperwork to offer me up in nomination for a provincial-level “lifetime achievement” award in graduate teaching. Most had been in at least one course with me previously. No pure gift ever brought more pleasure – once the feeling of relief had subsided.

In the 1980s and 1990s I completed longer executive-level assignments in several federal departments and central agencies, all wonderful opportunities. I continue to consult and provide writing services to government.