Dr Johanna Schnabel

Johanna has joined the School as a Newton International Fellow in February 2018. Her postdoc project, funded by the British Academy, examines the centralising effect of conditional grants in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Federal grants that are earmarked for specific purposes have been identified as the main instruments through which federal governments centralise power in their hands. The project examines the degree to which provinces and states can shape the genesis of policy programs funded through conditional grants so as to mitigate their centralising effect, focusing on programs such as Medicaid in the United States and Medicare in Australia and Canada.
Before coming to Kent, Johanna completed a PhD at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where she taught courses on comparative and Swiss politics, political science concepts, and federalism. In her doctoral research, she examined the role of intergovernmental councils in managing the various interdependencies that exist in today’s federations, focusing on education and fiscal policy. In September 2018, she was awarded a doctoral dissertation award (Prix de Faculté) by the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lausanne. At the University of Lausanne, Johanna also contributed to a research project on fiscal consolidation in federal states, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The results of this research project have been published by Routledge in 2017.

ORCID 

•  Comparative Politics 
• Public Policy (esp. Education, Health Care, and Fiscal Policy) 
• Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations 
• Countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, United States

 Current projects

An Instrument of Centralisation? The Politics of Conditional Grants in Federal States, funded by the British Academy

Johanna has taught courses at the University of Lausanne were: 

• Public Policy Evaluation (academic year 2017/18)
• Public Policy Making in Switzerland (2017/18), Comparative and Swiss Politics (2016/17 and 2017/18)
• Political Science Concepts (2014/15 and 2015/16)
• Comparative Politics (2013/14, 2014/15, and 2015/16)

Johanna has also taught a course Comparing Western Democracy at the University of Gießen in 2011