Lori Thorlakson is Professor of Political Science, University of Alberta. Lori Thorlakson holds an MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics. Dr. Thorlakson is currently a co-PI (with Melanee Thomas at the University of Calgary) of a Future Energy Systems project, Political Pathways of Energy Transition. She also leads an NSERC-funded project on political aspects of electricity grid transformation. Dr. Thorlakson’s research focuses on issues of party competition and representation in multi-level systems, including federations and the European Union. She studies party organization, party system change and voter behaviour, and how these three dimensions of political competition combine to shape the nature of representation in democratic states. She is also involved in research that assesses the impact of the EU on democratic development, particularly in post communist states, and research that examines the development of the European Parliament and representation in the EU.