Derek Powell is an Associate Professor in Law and Head of the Multi-Level Government Initiative in the Dullah Omar Institute of Constitutional Law, Governance and Human Rights at the University of the Western Cape. He served as a deputy director-general, senior civil servant and policy advisor in the South African government under the Mandela and Mbeki administrations (1996-2009), where he worked on key policy processes to establish and reform the systems of democratic local government and intergovernmental relations. He was head of the research department at the Constitutional Assembly during the process to draft a democratic constitution for South Africa (1994-96). His research interests focus on comparative constitutional studies, international peace and security law and politics, local government, intergovernmental relations, public finance management, and more recently on using large datasets in researching complex problems of governance that cut across the law, state, economy, and society. He is co-editor of Jaap de Visser, Nico Steytler, Derek Powell, Ebenezer Durojaye eds., Constitution Building in Africa (Nomos, 2015).
