Dr. Cristine de Clercy completed BA (Hons) and MA degrees in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, and received her PhD from The University of Western Ontario in 2000. She taught at Saskatchewan from 1998 until 2006, when she joined Western’s Political Science department as an Associate Professor. For many years she has been associated with the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives at the University of Saskatchewan.
Much of her research centers on leadership, and she employs several discrete methodological approaches to understand leadership in different contexts and across contexts. Her particular expertise concerns the informational and power conditions surrounding leader-follower relationships. She has published articles in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Canadian Public Policy, Politics and Governance, and has authored chapters in several recent collections including Louis M. Imbeau and Steve Jacob (eds.) Behind a Veil of Ignorance? Power and Uncertainty in Constitutional Design (Springer 2015). Her recent work focuses on how leaders manage crises, and the direction of the scholarship on leadership since the global financial crisis of 2007-2008.
For several years she has taught a popular undergraduate course on leadership, and is a Co-Director of Western University’s Leadership and Democracy Lab—a student-led think tank and research cluster.
Dr. de Clercy is a well-known media commentator, and contributes her insight about leadership to leading national and international media outlets including CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail, Bloomberg News Service, Canadian Press Newswire, Reuters, Al Jazeera and the New York Times.
