If the problem is 100% here
EffectSelectorForm effectSelectorForm = new EffectSelectorForm(Effects);
There's only one possible explanation: property/variable "Effects" is not initialized properly... Debug your code to see what you pass to your objects.
EDIT after several hours
There were some problems:
MEF attribute [Import] didn't work as expected, so we replaced it for the time being with a manually populated List<>. While the collection was null, it was causing exceptions later in the code, when the method tried to get the type of the selected item and there was none.
several event handlers weren't wired up to control events
Some problems are still present, but I believe OP's original problem has been fixed. Other problems are not related to this one.