Elisabeth Alber is Senior Researcher and Program Head (Federal Scholar in Residence) at the Eurac Research Institute for Comparative Federalism. She is also lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Innsbruck. She holds a PhD from the University of Innsbruck and does research on federal systems and decentralization processes, territorial autonomies and minority rights, and deliberative democracy and participatory constitution-making. As visiting scholar, she has worked in Germany, the USA, Spain, Australia, Overseas France and North Macedonia. As consultant, she has worked with many international organizations, most recently in Moldova.