Michael Burgess, who was Professor of Federal Studies and Director of the former Centre for Federal Studies at the University of Kent (2005-2014), passed away on February 4, 2018, at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. His interests in federalism dated back to his doctoral studies in the mid-1970s at the University of Leicester. He was the author of, among other works, The British Tradition of Federalism (Leicester 1995), Comparative Federalism: Theory and Practice (Routledge 2006), and In Search of the Federal Spirit: New Comparative Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives (Oxford 2012). He served as a vice president of the International Association of Centres for Federal Studies and was a member of the editorial advisory boards of Publius: The Journal of Federalism and Regional and Federal Studies. A collection of essays honoring him was published as Understanding Federalism and Federation edited by Alain-G. Gagnon and Soeren Keil (Routledge 2015).
