Staffan I. Lindberg
Staffan I. Lindberg (born 1969), is a Swedish political scientist, Principal Investigator for Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute and Director of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg. He is a professor in the Department of Political Science, and member of the Board of University of Gothenburg, Sweden member of the Young Academy of Sweden, Wallenberg Academy Fellow, Research Fellow at the Quality of Government Institute; and senior advisor for the Oslo Analytica. Lindberg's main research interests are comparative politics, democracy and democratization, Africa, political organizations, corruption and clientelism. Early life and education . Prof. Lindberg has extensive project management and data administration experience outside of academia. In 1986, at the age of 17, he organised the largest musical festival in Sweden, Gärdesfesten. During 1988-1990 he was one of the international lead-coordinators for the youth project Next Stop Soviet, involving the participation of 9,000 individuals from the Nordic countries and the Soviet Union in more than 350 projects. In 1987-1988 Lindberg worked as a production manager for a series of industrial films, ads, TV shows, including Sunes Jul and drama productions which included working with Donya Feuer at Kulturhuset and Royal  National Theatre. Lindberg received his Ph.D. in 2005 from Lund University, Sweden. His dissertation "The power of elections : democratic participation, competition and legitimacy in Africa" won the American Political Science Association's Juan Linz Award for best dissertation 2005. Career. Lindberg began his teaching career at Lund University, then worked as an assistant professor at Kent State University between 2005-2006. From 2006 until 2013 he was an assistant professor and then an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at University of Florida. He has also spent two years in Ghana as parliamentary advisor, and consults on a  regular basis for donors in Africa. In academia beside organising and chairing numerous international conferences, panels and other activities, Lindberg was the Program Chair for the African Studies Association in 2013. He also initiated and led the collaborative research project on democratization by elections between 2007-2009 involving more than 15 renowned scholars from universities in the US and Europe. From 2006-2009 he was the co-PI of the international research consortium African Power and Politics program involving seven institutions across three continents with a budget of £3.5mn on behalf of the University of Florida. Lindberg was on  the executive of APSA’s Comparative Politics Section (2011-2013), the Executive Co-Editor of APSA’s Comparative Democratization Newsletter (2012-2014), member of several scientific advisory boards, reviewer for a series of leading journals, and has won several awards. For 2.5 years at University of Gothenburg, he was project coordinator of the Center for Data Analysis, integrating the data and online analysis facilities of the SOM Institute, the QoG Institute, the MOD Institute, the Swedish NES, the Mediabarometer. Lindberg was also in charge of the World Values Survey in Sweden at University of Gothenburg 2010-2012. Books. OTHER ACADEMIC  JOURNAL ARTICLES CHAPTERS IN PEER REVIEWED BOOKS