Tracy Beck Fenwick is the Director of the Centre, having subsumed the former Centre for Australian Federalism. She is a lecturer of Comparative Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations.

Tracy Beck Fenwick was previously a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies at ANU, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan. She completed her doctorate specializing in Comparative Politics at the University of Oxford, U.K. in 2009 (St. Anthony’s College). She holds a M.A. and a B.A. from McGill University, Canada.

Tracy is an expert in comparative federalism and is the author of a single authored book on federalism and democracy in Latin America. She has authored key articles on federalism and intergovernmental relations in several journals. She is also a regular guest at formal workshops at the Crawford School of Public Policy and is actively participating in the research project ‘Renewing Australian Federalism’ led by ANU and the University of Melbourne. Her prime research interests are on federalism and the welfare state and the politics of investing socially within federal systems of government. Her research suggests that municipalities and local governments ought to matter for achieving national policy objectives, particularly in the areas of social welfare and social policy. When it comes to dealing with many contemporary issues of governance, the federal government cannot go it alone.

Her teaching includes courses on ‘Comparative Federalism and Multi-Level Governance’, ‘Politics in Latin America’ and ‘Contemporary Brazilian Politics’. She is a longstanding member of the ‘Decentralization and Subnational Politics Section’ of the Latin American Studies Association, the ‘Local and Urban Politics Section’ of the Canadian Political Science Association, and the ‘Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy’ of the International Sociological Association. She is part of expansive network of internationally recognized scholars working on key aspects of comparative federalism and public policy from around the world.