Prof. dr. Ronald Holzhacker (University of Groningen, Netherlands) is Professor of Comparative Multilevel Governance and Regional Structure in the Faculty of Spatial Science and also teaches in the Department of International Relations and International Organization. He is broadly interested in questions of governance, human rights, and the interaction between civil society organizations and institutions in democratic political systems. He serves as Director of the Groningen Research Centre for Southeast Asia and ASEAN (SEA ASEAN) located in Groningen and Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia. He leads an inter-disciplinary team of scholars and PhD researchers engaged in theoretically driven comparative research focused on governance, societal impact, and sustainable society in Southeast Asia.

As an American scholar, he holds a PhD (1997) from the University of Michigan in political science, the J.D. (1987) from the University of Minnesota Law School, and a Bachelor (1983) in economics and political science. He is published in such journals as Law & Policy, Comparative European Politics, Journal of European Integration, European Union Politics, Nations and Nationalism, Party Politics and the Journal of Legislative Studies. He is co-editor of five books over the past decade, most recently Decentralization and Governance in Indonesia (NY: Springer 2016) and Freedom, Security and Justice in the European Union (NY: Springer 2014).  From 2009-2013 he served as one of four senior EU experts for the Network of Socio-Economic Experts in the Field of Anti-Discrimination, established by the European Commission to monitor the implementation of the equality directives in the EU member states.

University website:

SEA ASEAN website:  http://www.rug.nl/research/ursi/sea-asean/