This semester we are excited to welcome a new PhD student, Olivia Mendoza, to the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance.  Olivia is the recipient of the prestigious Deliberative Democracy PhD Scholarship offered to students aiming to specialise in one of the core research areas of the Centre.

Olivia's PhD project advances the Centre's research focus on theory and methods of deliberative democracy. It lies at the intersection of feminist philosophy and democratic theory focusing particularly on the role of emotions in public deliberation.

Olivia's research is on ethics, feminist, and socio-political philosophy, with focus on emotions and social justice. She will investigate the role of emotions in the context of online political discussions in the Philippines. More specifically, she unpacks how emotions such as hate, resentment, or anger shape the dynamics of political participation and deliberation leading to exclusions, marginalization, illegitimate decision-making, or harms in the affective level.

Prior to joining the Centre, Olivia was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the University of the Philippines Baguio (UP), where she taught courses on ethics and the history of philosophy and the social sciences. Her most recent work, "Emotions and Filipino Resilience," is forthcoming in Routledge, and is part of a collection of works of Filipino philosophers. She was also recently awarded the 'One UP Faculty Grant Award' in Philosophy (Ethics) for Outstanding Teaching and Public Service in UP.

Asked what she is most looking forward to about her PhD, Olivia said that she is keen to learn more from other scholars in the Centre and how they masterfully blend theory and practice and produce impactful works on deliberative democracy. She finds the Centre's collegial atmosphere very conducive to intellectual work: "My supervisory panel is composed of very fine scholars who are experts in their fields and who are generous in their mentorship."

Olivia’s PhD project is supervised by Dr Hans Asenbaum, Dr Adele Webb and Professor John Dryzek.