George C. Perlin

Brief Biography

From 1969 to 2003, George Perlin was a member of the Department teaching courses on Canadian and Comparative politics. From 2003 to 2013 he taught courses on international democratic development and Canadian democracy in the School of Policy Studies.  

He founded and was Director of the then Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's (now known as the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity) from 1993 to 2002.

From 2003 to 2006 Perlin was a Fellow at the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) where he edited and contributed to a series of papers on Canada's policy for assistance to democratic development.  He has been a consultant on democracy assistance policy to agencies of the Canadian government and to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Perlin has also had experience as a practitioner in the delivery of democracy assistance as director of two CIDA-funded projects to establish a program of education in the study of democracy for the universities, technical colleges, and secondary schools of Ukraine.  In collaboration with Kyiv National Pedagogical University, the projects established courses on democracy in 250 universities and technical colleges and an estimated 20,000 high schools.

He co-authored and edited with a group of Ukrainian scholars three editions of a university textbook,   on the fundamentals of democracy (Osnovii Demokrati),  and was series editor for 15 supplementary texts, co-authoring five. He has also written extensively about Canadian politics.

In November 2008, he was elected as an international member of Ukraine's National Academy of Pedagogical Science.