Juan Pablo Luna (Ph.D. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2006) is Professor at the Escuela de Gobierno of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and the incoming inaugural chairholder of the Diamond-Brown Chair in Democratic Studies in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. He is one of the world's leading political scientists studying political parties and representation in Latin America, and a major contributor to both public policy debates and basic political science research about democracy, state capacity, and organized crime. His research, both in its treatments of electoral processes and political party strategies on the one hand, and in its understanding of state capacity and the impact of organized crime on democratic politics on the other, focuses on the challenges of governance in deeply segmented, class-stratified societies. 

He is the author of five monographs and one textbook, and the coeditor of four more books, some in English and some in Spanish. The best-known of these in anglophone political science is the multiple-award-winning Segmented Representation: Political Party Strategies in Unequal Democracies.  

Luna has served as Principal Investigator for the Millennium Institute VIODEMOS (Violence and Democracy) project; Principal Investigator for the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data; and Associate Editor of the journal Latin American Politics and Society. He has held visiting fellowships and appointments at universities around the world including Sciences-Po, Columbia, Brown, the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard, Princeton, and Salamanca. 

His most recent book, coauthored with Andreas Feldman, is Criminal Politics and Botched Development in Contemporary Latin America.  

Established by a generous $5million gift to McGill from G. Garvin Brown IV BA'91 and Steffanie Diamond Brown, the Diamond-Brown Chair aims to bring fundamental research on problems of contemporary democratic government to bear on public policy decisionmaking, notably around democratic renewal and citizenship engagement. In addition to supporting the establishment of the Chair itself, the gift will support an annual conference designed to promote public discussion and debate of ideas, alternatives, and data that can improve democratic government, electoral processes, and citizen engagement.

3:30PM Faculty response roundtable 

 - Arash Abizadeh, R.B. Angus Professor of Political Science  

- Manuel Balán, Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean of Arts  

- Elissa Berwick, Assistant Professor of Political Science  

- Terri Givens, Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean of Arts  

- Maria Popova, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director, Jean Monnet Centre    

4:55PM Closing Remarks

5PM Reception

Unfortunately, Senator Dr. Rosa Galvez, MSc'89, PhD'94, had to cancel her attendance.