About Professor Patricia McCarney

Patricia McCarney is the Founding Director of the Global Cities Program at the Centre for International Studies, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. Her teaching and research in the Department of Political Science is in the field of international development, with a concentration on shifting agendas inside international development and granting agencies, urban governance, politics and planning in cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America, local government and global cities in comparative perspective. For the past decade, Professor McCarney has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Urban Institute, chairing the Executive Committee of the Board on International Programmes. She has also served as Associate Vice-President - International Research and Development at the University of Toronto.

She received her Ph.D. in International Development from M.I.T. in 1987. Before joining the University of Toronto, between 1983 and 1994, Professor McCarney worked as a professional staff member in a number of international agencies, including the International Development Research Centre (IDRC-Social Sciences Division) in Ottawa, the World Bank in Washington (Africa Technical Division-Infrastructure), and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS Habitat-Research and Development Division) in Nairobi. As part of her work in these three international funding agencies, she worked in some 30 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The 10 years of experience concentrated on strengthening institutions of higher learning throughout the less developed countries, instituting policy reform in the field of governance, and funding international social science research.

In addition to four books — Cities and Governance: Latin America, Asia, and Africa in Comparative Perspective; The Changing Nature of Local Government in the Developing World; Governance on the Ground: Innovations and Discontinuities in Cities of the Developing World: and, Creating Knowledge, Strengthening Nations: The Role of Higher Education, Patricia McCarney is the author of numerous articles and papers on these subjects. Her next book is tentatively titled, Space, Economy and Cities: A Case-Based Perspective from India.