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< Back Emily Foley Postdoctoral Research Fellow About Emily Foley researches social democratic and centre-left parties, focusing on party politics, political organisation, and participation in Australia. Her work also explores immigration policy-making and labour rights, with an interest in the intersection of democratic governance and social justice. Emily is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She is currently working on the Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Project Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks (2021–25). She is also a co-convener of the Australian Political Studies Association Political Organisation and Participation (POP) caucus.

< Back Nivek Thompson Associate About Nivek Thompson's research focuses on the impact of democratic innovations on the attitudes of political elites to the role of citizens in our democracy. She also runs the boutique consultancy, Deliberately Engaging, which recruits mini-publics to support deliberative processes and enhance democratic decision-making.

Latest News - Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance < Back Tackling far-right extremism: Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Jordan McSwiney, gets among the experts 17 May 2023 Congratulations to our Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Jordan McSwiney. Jordan has been accepted into the Younger Fellow Visiting Program at the Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX), located at the University of Oslo. Launched in 2016, C-REX is a cross-disciplinary centre for the study of right-wing extremism, hate crime and political violence. Jordan will join leading scholars in this highly topical subject and will present his work on far-right violent extremism and political parties during his fellowship. Asked what he is most looking forward to during the fellowship, Jordan said that he is keen to learn more about the aftermath of the July 2011 attacks and its impact on Norwegian society. His residency at the centre may also provide insights into the indicators of democratic resilience for other communities around the world and will be a great opportunity to build ties that could strengthen our centre’s own Democratic Resilience Project.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow < Back Quinlan Bowman Postdoctoral Research Fellow About Quinlan Bowman is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).

< Back Power in high-stake deliberative settings: Analytical insights from linguistics Simona Zimmermann, University of Stuttgart Tue 28 November 2017 The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract What role does power have in real-world mini-publics with real-life consequences? This question has hardly been studied. Yet, experiences from high-stake settings of deliberation that have consequences for participants’ everyday lives - for example in respect to their reputation and relations in the local polity - are highly relevant for integrating deliberative mini-publics in everyday-political life. Based on this reflection, the presented research project seeks to understand the meaning and role of power in the relational network among participants in citizen assemblies of a local small-scale participatory budget institution in Berlin’s district Treptow-Köpenick (Germany). These assemblies discuss and decide over the distribution of a fixed budget among neighbourhood projects which is a competence rarely ceded to citizens by German authorities. For analysis, assemblies are videotaped and studied ethnomethodologically based on a relational approach. The presentation will focus on the contributions linguistics can make to the analysis of power relations in deliberative settings. About the speaker Simona Zimmermann is a PhD candidate in political sciences at the University of Stuttgart (Prof. André Bächtiger). She holds a Master degree in Empirical Social and Political Analysis of the University of Stuttgart and a Diploma and Master from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (SciencesPo) Bordeaux. Her research interests include deliberative forms of citizen participation and politics in urban planning. She aims at working inter- and transdisciplinary in order to develop solutions for societal challenges. In her PhD project Simona analyses relations of power in deliberative mini publics under a network perspective by qualitative methods of inquiry. Case study is a local participatory budget in Berlin Treptow-Köpenick (Germany). Before obtaining a scholarship from the national talent program (Friedrich-Ebert Foundation), Simona worked in an interdisciplinary research group on sustainable urban mobility (Institute of Urban Design, University of Stuttgart). Here, she occasionally teaches concepts and methods of the social sciences to students in urban planning and architecture. Previous Next

< Back Catherine Settle Associate About Catherine’s doctoral research into the citizen’s experience of epistemic practices when deliberative mini-publics are applied in Australian health policy settings focused her attention on the benefits of closing the gap between the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.

Former PhD student < Back Penelope Marshall Former PhD student About Penelope completed her dissertation entitled ‘Playing for Sheep Stations: A Discourse Analysis of Wild Dog Management and Control in New South Wales, Australia’ in 2013 at the Australian National University.

< Back From elected to connected: Designing for recursive representation Nick Vlahos, Selen Ercan, Nardine Alnemr and John Dryzek (University of Canberra), Andrew Leigh (MP) Tue 4 May 2021 11:00am - 12:00pm Virtual seminar Seminar recording is available on our YouTube channel. Abstract Recent thinking on improving the deliberative qualities of elected representation can be captured under the broad heading of what Jane Mansbridge terms recursive representation, which seeks ongoing interaction between representatives and their constituents. This paper explores the possibilities of facilitating such interaction by establishing a series of deliberative townhalls where the constituents meet their elected representatives and discuss the issues of common concern. Empirically, the paper draws on a recent experiment in ‘directly representative democracy’ in Australia, which involved designing two deliberative town halls with a Federal Member of the Parliament to discuss a controversial issue (mitochondrial donation) ahead of a parliamentary debate on this issue. Drawing on the interviews with the participants of these town halls, we argue that recursive representation works well in directly representative democracy to the degree three criteria of deliberative capacity are met: authenticity, inclusion and consequentiality. The paper unpacks the meaning of each criteria from the perspective of town hall participants and discusses their relevance for the theory and practice of recursive representation. About the speakers Nick Vlahos is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance. Selen Ercan is an Associate Professor of Politics at the Institute’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance. Nardine Alnemr is a PhD candidate at the entre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance. John Dryzek is Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Centenary Professor in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis. Andrew Leigh is a Member of the Australian House of Representatives. Previous Next

< Back NATIVE TITLE AS A DELIBERATIVE SPACE FOR INDIGENOUS SELF-DETERMINATION About this event In 1992, the High Court of Australia delivered its historic Mabo v Queensland (No 2) decision, declaring Australian law could now recognise the pre-colonial rights (‘native title’) of Indigenous people to their traditional lands under their own laws. However, under Australian settler-colonial law, native title is constructed as a domestic property right and not as a set of political, cultural or sovereign rights’. Consequently, Indigenous peoples claims to self-determination has attained a prominent place in contemporary political and public debates on Indigenous-state relations in Australia. With Australia continuing to reject Indigenous self-determination, Aboriginal people must engage pragmatically and innovatively with state policies and institutions. In this presentation McCaul discusses examples of democratic innovation within Australia’s native title system as practiced by Aboriginal people focusing on comprehensive settlement agreements between Indigenous groups and the state; participatory governance in relation to the environmental management of Indigenous lands; and efforts to re-build Indigenous nationhood and traditional institutions of governance. McCaul argues native title has created space for public deliberation on self-determination and efforts to decolonise relations, governance, and policymaking between Indigenous polities and the settler colonial state. Justin McCaul is a descendent of the Mbarbarum Traditional Owners of far north Queensland. He joined ANU College of Law as an Associate Lecturer/PhD Candidate in February 2019. He has many years of experience working in native title and Indigenous policy in Australia for several non-government organisations including Oxfam Australia. He also worked in Cambodia on rural development and biodiversity conservation projects with Indigenous groups in northeast Cambodia. Before joining ANU he worked at the National Native Title Council researching the challenges Indigenous organisations face utilising their native title rights. His PhD uses deliberative democracy theory to discuss how Indigenous groups use their native title rights to assert self-determination claims and engage in public policy. Seminar series convenors Hans Asenbaum and Sahana Sehgal . Please register via Eventbrite . Previous Next

< Back Deliberative Systems in Theory and Practice Edited By Stephen Elstub, Selen A. Ercan, and Ricardo Fabrino Mendonça 2018 , Routledge Summary Deliberative democracy is an approach to democracy that requires collective decision-making to be preceded by reasoned, inclusive, and respectful debate for it to be legitimate. It has become an increasingly dominant approach to democracy over the last few decades. In recent years, there has been a particular focus on ‘deliberative systems.’ A systemic approach to deliberative democracy opens up a new way of thinking about public deliberation in both theory and practice. It suggests understanding deliberation as a communicative activity that occurs in a diversity of spaces, and emphasizes the need for interconnection between these spaces. It offers promising solutions to some of the long-standing theoretical issues in the deliberative democracy literature such as legitimation, inclusion, representation, as well as the interaction and interconnection between public opinion formation and decision-making sites more generally. The deliberative systems approach also offers a new way of conceptualizing and studying the practice of deliberation in contemporary democracies. Despite its conceptual and practical appeal, the concept of deliberative systems also entails potential problems and raises several important questions. These include the relationship with the parts and the whole of the deliberative system, the prospects of its institutionalization, and various difficulties related to its empirical analysis. The deliberative systems approach therefore requires greater theoretical critical scrutiny, and empirical investigation. This book contributes to this endeavour by bringing together cutting edge research on the theory and practice of deliberative systems. It will identify the key challenges against the concept to enhance understanding of both its prospects and problems promoting its refinement accordingly. The chapters originally published as a special issue in Critical Policy Studies. Read more Previous Next

< Back Inclusion and the meta-conversation: Structural topic modelling the Scottish Independence Referendum John Parkinson, Maastricht University Tue 2 July 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract I will presenting full results of my big data analysis of the Scottish indyref debate from 2012 to 2014, and show (a) that, in terms of topics being discussed, the real divide was not between Yes and No, but between elite and everyday conversations; (b) that economic issues were especially divided; and (c) that the single biggest topic was the meta-conversation, with citizens holding each other to deliberative norms in public. About the speaker John Parkinson is Adjunct Professor of Politics. He works on the relationships between formal policy making and a wide variety of practices in the public sphere, crossing boundaries between normative political theory, public policy, political sociology, and cultural studies. He is a leading proponent of the ‘deliberative systems’ approach, as well as the symbolic, discursive, performative aspects of policy and democratic politics. His books include Deliberating in the Real World (Oxford, 2006), Deliberative Systems (Cambridge, 2012), Democracy and Public Space (Oxford, 2012), and, with Centre Associate André Bächtiger, Mapping and Measuring Deliberation, forthcoming with Oxford in 2018. His current research project with Núria Franco-Guillén is the ARC-funded ‘Sparking a National Conversation’, which is developing new electronic social science tools to map and track claims over time and space in two cases: the Scottish independence debate of 2012-14, and the campaign to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian constitution, 2015-17. Previous Next

< Back Rhetorics of expertise and local knowledge in citizens' juries on wind farm development Sara Drury, Wabash College Tue 7 May 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Today’s global political environment increasingly faces issues that spark tensions between expertise and local knowledge. Socio-scientific issues draw attention towards this tension, as they require negotiation across and through multiple modes of evidence. Democratic innovations, such as deliberative citizens’ juries, been proposed as a means of managing these tensions and as a way of creating representative, fairer decision making. But there are questions around participatory processes, the utilization of expertise, and deliberative quality. The 2013-2014 “Citizens’ juries on wind farm development in Scotland” offers an opportunity to examine how different types of evidence impact deliberative quality in participatory public deliberation. Using transcripts from the citizens’ juries on wind farm development, this paper analyzes arguments from expertise and arguments from experiences. Through a critical-interpretative research methodology utilizing theories of argumentation, we demonstrate how arguments relating to scientific evidence prominently functioned as de facto reasoning whereas arguments with economic evidence more prominently interacted with local knowledge, experiences, and engagement. The findings offer implications for deliberative design to improve and promote deliberative quality. About the speaker Sara A. Mehltretter Drury, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Chair of Rhetoric at Wabash College, a liberal arts college in Indiana, U.S.A. She also serves as Director of Wabash Democracy and Public Discourse, an interdisciplinary initiative that partners with communities to hold dialogue and deliberation events. Drury’s research focuses on the intersections of rhetoric and deliberative democracy, with particular attention to argumentation and political judgment. From 2017-2018, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Previous Next

< Back Representing the disadvantaged? Conceptions of representation in a citizens' jury in Switzerland Alexander Geisler, University of Geneva Tue 18 February 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm Crackenback, NSW Abstract While referendums and initiatives are part and parcel of Swiss direct democracy, democratic innovations based on random selection remain underexplored. One such example are Citizens’ Juries assessing popular votes and informing fellow voters via a summary statement, as in the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). Fishkin (2018, 2013) has suggested that citizens bring mostly their own interests to the table in larger types of such deliberative gatherings. Challenging this finding, evidence collected from a Swiss pilot CIR in the municipality of Sion involving twenty randomly selected voters’ points to more complex perceptions of whom panelists perceive to represent. The participants reported that they had also represented disadvantaged groups inside and outside their political jurisdiction when discussing an upcoming popular initiative on affordable housing. This suggests that conceptions of representation on part of the panelists in a minipublic and particularly in the CIR may be more complex than previously assumed. Crucially, panelists taking stances of other groups may affect existing shortcomings of inclusion and representation occurring in minipublics of small size. About the speaker Since November 2018, Alexander worked as a PhD candidate at the University of Geneva in the project “A non-populist theory of direct democracy”, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under supervision of Professor Nenad Stojanovic. The project involves conducting two CIR-like mini-public pilots in Switzerland. He earned his Master of Arts in Empirical Political and Social Research (2018) at the University of Stuttgart. After graduation, he worked at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Stuttgart as a research and teaching assistant. During this period, he was involved in two projects: creating a database to track participatory processes in the municipalities of South-West Germany and managing an online network of universities that engage in research on civic participation. His research interests are in the fields of deliberative democracy, political behaviour, the theory and practice of democratic innovations, and social cognition. Previous Next

< Back Operationalizing democratic listening Mary F (Molly) Scudder, Purdue University Tue 5 November 2019 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract In order to capture the epistemic, ethical, or democratic benefits of deliberation, people must listen to one another. In fact, listening is constitutive of the deliberative act. Therefore, finding ways to evaluate listening is essential to the project of deliberative democracy. In this paper, I consider how to measure the act of listening in small-scale face-to-face deliberative encounters. Specifically, I tackle the observational challenge of measuring the act of listening itself, as opposed to listening outcomes. Prior work measures listening by focusing on narrow constructs like aural recall, or by emphasizing the outcomes we hope listening might bring about, such as responsiveness. I show that each of these measures, in isolation, is inadequate and fails to capture the most democratically meaningful aspects of listening. I go on to explain, however, that these measures can be usefully combined into a lexical scale that captures different degrees of, or steps toward democratic listening. I also propose new measures to include within such an index, including the perception of speakers themselves, whether they feel as if others have listened to them. About the speaker Dr. Mary F (Molly) Scudder is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Purdue University. She received her PhD from the University of Virginia. She specializes in democratic theory, especially practices of citizenship and the conditions of meaningfully democratic deliberation in contexts of deep difference. She has published articles in Polity and Political Studies and is currently wrapping up work on a book investigating how citizen listening can move deliberation in the direction of greater democracy. Previous Next

< Back EROSION OF DEMOCRACY AND DEMOCRATIC RESILIENCE ABSTRACT Research on erosion of democracy has blossomed during the last decade. Much less scholarly attention has been devoted to the issue of democratic resilience. But how can we understand democratic resilience? How can we conceptualize it? What role do institutions, actors and structural factors play? I sketch three potential reactions of resilient democratic regimes to erosion of democracy: to withstand without changes, to adapt through internal changes, and to recover without losing the democratic character of its regime and its core institutions, organizations and procedures.. BIO Wolfgang Merkel is Prof. of Political Science at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and Senior Scholar of the Democracy Institute at Central European University in Budapest. He is i.a. a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and a Prof. em. At Humboldt University of Berlin. Previous Next

Latest News - Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance < Back Our Senior Research Fellow, Dr Hans Asenbaum, has published his new book 'The Politics of Becoming' 21 Sept 2023 A hearty congratulations to Dr Hans Asenbaum from the Centre for his new (open access) publication with Oxford University Press, The Politics of Becoming – Anonymity and Democracy in the Digital Age . The book focuses on practical solutions to the problems of discrimination and identity confinement in political participation. Throughout the book, Dr Asenbaum hopes to facilitate an interdisciplinary exchange between different academic disciplines and different strands of democratic theory. Dr Asenbaum has been intrigued by questions about participatory and radical democracy for a long time. In particular, the role of our identities and how when come together to do politics, we judge each other on our looks. With a desire to understand and question this, Dr Asenbaum developed a curiosity about the role of anonymity in democracy. He purposefully asks, ‘What happens if we can't tell each other's race, gender, sexuality, class, age etc.?’ He began exploring this question at the University of Westminster during his PhD, under the supervision of Professor Graham Smith . The result of this investigation is his new book: ‘The Politics of Becoming’, which provides an in-depth analysis and theorization of anonymity in democratic participation. When asked about the journey to this point, an elated Dr Asenbaum remarked “my thesis builds the foundation for this book, and it has been a 10-year process from initiation to publication. It has been quite a journey, and I could not be happier about the result and the wonderful people I met on the way and who are all part of this project.” Dr Asenbaum’s book strengthens our research in the areas of citizens engagement , identity politics and democratic theory .

< Back Anne Nygaard Jedzini PhD Candidate About Anne Nygaard Jedzini is a PhD researcher on power-sharing at Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at University of Canberra. She is the recipient of the Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative 2021 PhD Scholarship. Anne is the former Vice Mayor and Councillor of the City of Aarhus in Denmark where she held public office from 2014-2018. The City of Aarhus is her Danish hometown and where she is originally from. Anne is currently elected as the Australian Political Studies Association Postgraduate Caucus representative and is a member of the Australian Political Studies Association's Executive Committee. She is also currently appointed as the HDR member on the External Review Panel for the Faculty for Business, Government & Law at University of Canberra. For her PhD, Anne examines how power is shared, exercised and experienced, and to what extent power-sharing has deliberative dimensions in deliberative and participatory processes (democratic innovations) in Australian local governments. More specifically, her PhD examines the democratic, political and institutional conditions for power-sharing through deliberation between councillors and community members in a comparative case study of three Australian local government councils. She is set to complete her PhD by June, 2024. Anne has extensive experience from Danish politics. As Vice Mayor, she served as political member of five committees. Two of these committees were deliberative co-creation task committees with both councillors and relevant members of the public. During her time in public office, Anne focused on how members of the community could have more direct impact on public policymaking. She also focused on how to create the best possible conditions for startups, entrepreneurs and small business owners. Throughout her time in Danish politics, Anne ran multiple political bipartisan campaigns. These campaigns sought to bring different perspectives, lived-experiences and worldviews together over issues such as lack of democratic participation, enablement of young people's voices and gender inequality in local government politics. Much of her research interests stem from her lived-experience with power, democratic innovations and policymaking in Denmark. Anne's research interests include power and power-sharing in institutions/organisations, democratic innovations, deliberative/participatory democracy, political leadership, Australian politics and qualitative research methods. PhD supervisors Nicole Curato (Primary Supervisor) Selen Ercan (Secondary Supervisor) Academic Experience 01.07.2023-present. Job Title: Academic Tutor in Power and Policymaking . Organisation: Griffith School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Australia. Responsibility: Academic tutor and marker for a total of thirty undergraduate students in the unit, Power and Policymaking , throughout trimester 2. 01.08.2021-present. Job Title: Academic Tutor in Political Leadership . Organisation: Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra, Australia. Responsibility : Academic tutor and marker for a total of forty undergraduate students in the unit, Political Leadership , throughout semester 2. 01.02.2022-01.12.2022. Job Title: Academic Tutor in Introductions to Politics and Government . Organisation: Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra, Australia. Responsibility: Academic tutor and marker for a total of forty undergraduate students in the unit, Introductions to Politics and Government , throughout semester 1 and 2. 01.08.2021-01.12.2022. Job Title: Academic Tutor in Investigating and Explaining Society . Organisation: Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra, Australia. Responsibility : Academic tutor and marker for a total of sixty undergraduate students in the unit, Investigating and Explaining Society , throughout semester 2. 01.03.2021-01.07.2021. Job Title: Event Manager on Australian Citizens’ Jury on Genome Editing . Organisation: Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra, Australia. Responsibility: Event manage the research project Australian Citizens’ Jury on Genome Editing which was also a three-day event held at the Museum of Australian Democracy from June 17-20, 2021. 01.08.2020-31.12.2020. Job Title: Senior Research Assistant on “Network Analysis of Emissions of Transport and Gas Users in the ACT.” Organisation: Griffith University, Australia. Responsibility: Identify key transport emission stakeholders in the ACT to determine their carbon footprint. Professional Experience 01.02.2019-01.08.2020. Job Title: Sales and Business Development Director. Organisation: Suncil International ApS, Australia. Responsibility: Develop market strategy across Australia through strategic business development. 01.04.2018-01.02.2019. Job Title: Business Developer. Organisation: Suncil International ApS, Denmark. Responsibility: Stakeholder management of customers and business partners in EU and MENA region. Public Office 01.01.2014-01.01.2018. Job Title: Vice Mayor and Councillor: Political member of The Committee of Volunteering and Co-creation Political member of The Committee of Co-Citizenship Political member of The Committee of Finance Political member of The Committee of Children and Young People Political member of The Committee of Gender Equality and Diversity Organisation: Aarhus Municipality, Denmark. Responsibility: Preside over the political governance of the City of Aarhus through evidence-based policy decisions. Non-Peer Reviewed Publications Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2023. Politicians must share deliberative power to increase legitimacy. Type of Publication: Blog article published March 16, 2023 in the European Consortium’s Political Science Research blog, The Loop. Journal Articles under Peer Review Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2021. How do city council politicians facilitate co-creation? Evidence from Australia and Denmark. Type of Publication: Empirical journal article submitted November 15, 2021 in the Australian Journal of Political Science. Author Statement: I undertook an interpretivist empirical study of in-depth interviews with sixteen Danish and Australian city council politicians. I specifically explored what motivates city council politicians to practice and participate in co-creation processes, what societal stakeholders are included in co-creation processes and what the similarities and differences of co-creation processes are in Danish and Australian local governments in urban and regional areas. I recruited the research participants through my own political networks, transcribed the audio files of the interviews, wrote the interviews up in an analytical table, and did a thematic analysis of the research data against my main and sub-research questions. Academic Conferences 20.06.2022-22.06.2022. Title: Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2021. How do city council politicians understand and facilitate co-creation? An explorative study of Australian and Danish local governments. Organisation: Deliberative Democracy and Public Opinion Summer School, Turku, Finland. Details: Deliberative democracy conference with participation of deliberative democracy scholars from across the world. 09.06.2022-11.06.2022. Title: Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2021. How do city council politicians understand and facilitate co-creation? An explorative study of Australian and Danish local governments. Organisation: The Transatlantic Dialogue 16, Roskilde, Denmark. Details: Public administration conference with participation of American and European public administration scholars. 16.02.2022-17.02.2022. Title: Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2021. How do city council politicians understand and facilitate co-creation? Evidence from Australia and Denmark. Organisation: Australian Political Studies Association, Brisbane, Australia. Details: POP (Political Organisations & Participation) 2022 Workshop for emerging political science scholars in Australia. Presentations 21.02.2023. Title: Jedzini, Anne Nygaard. 2023. Democratic Innovations: From Aarhus to ACT. Organisation: City Renewable Authority, ACT Government and International Association for Public Participation Australasia, Canberra, Australia. Details: ‘Engaging in our city’ IAP2 Local Network breakfast event with participation of three speakers and sixty engagement practitioners from the public, private and civic sector in the ACT. Scholarships and Prizes 09.11.2021. Prize: Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for the Investigating and Explaining Society unit team. Organisation: University of Canberra Teaching Excellence Awards and Citations, University of Canberra. 23.02.2021. Scholarship: Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative 2021 PhD Scholarship. Organisation: Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra. Academic Administration 01.04.2023-present. Title: Research Student Member. Organisation: External Review Panel for the University of Canberra Faculty for Business, Government & Law, Australia. 01.12.2022-present. Title: Postgraduate Caucus Representative. Organisation: Australian Political Studies Association Executive Committee, Australian Political Studies Association, Australia. 01.03.2022-31.01.2023. Title: Higher Degree by Research Representative. Organisation: Graduate Research Committee, University of Canberra, Australia. 01.09.2020-31.12.2020. Title: Student Advisory Board Member. Organisation: The School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Australia. 01.01.2020-31.12.2020. Title: Master Student Board Member. Organisation: The Academic Board, La Trobe University, Australia. Political Advisory 26.07.2022-28.07.2022. Title: Political intern for Dr. Helen Haines MP Independent Member for Indi. Organisation: House of Representatives, Parliament of Australia, Australia. 01.08.2021-01.06.2022. Title: Deliberative Democracy Expert. Organisation: Kim for Canberra Party, Australia. 01.08.2016-01.12.2016. Title: Campaign Organiser. Organisation: The Danish Social Liberal Party’s U.S. Election Volunteer Team, Denmark. 01.01.2015-01.12.2016. Title: Political Advocate. Organisation: Danes for Hillary, Denmark. Research Interests Deliberative/participatory democracy Democratic/political institutions Democratic innovations Public administration Public governance Political leadership Australian politics Qualitative research methods

< Back Jordan McSwiney Senior Research Fellow About Jordan McSwiney is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. He completed his PhD at The University of Sydney in 2021. Jordan’s research focuses on the far right, with a particular focus on their communication and organisation. His work has been published in Information, Communication & Society, New Media & Society, and Patterns of Prejudice , among others. He is the author of Far-right political parties in Australia: Disorganisation and electoral failure (Routledge). At the Centre, Jordan is working on the project ‘Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks’ (Discovery Project, funded by Australian Research Council, 2021-25) Key Publications McSwiney, J. (2024). Far-right political parties in Australia: Disorganisation and electoral failure . Routledge. McSwiney, J., & Sengul, K. (2024). Humour, ridicule, and the far right: Mainstreaming exclusion through online animation . Television and New Media , 25(4), 315-333. Jasser, G., McSwiney, J., Pertwee, E., & Zannettou, S. (2023). ‘ Welcome to #GabFam’: Far-right virtual community on Gab . New Media & Society, 25 (7), 1728–1745. McSwiney, J., Vaughan, M. Heft, A., & Hoffman., M. (2021). Sharing the hate? Memes and transnationality in the far right’s digital visual culture . Information, Communication & Society , 24 (16) 2502-2521. McSwiney, J. (2021). Social networks and digital organisation: Far right parties at the 2019 Australian federal election .  Information, Communication & Society , 24 (10), 1401-1418. A full list of Jordan McSwiney’s publications is available here . Public Engagement Australian efforts on Islamophobia flag despite Christchurch wake-up call . Al Jazeera . 2024, March 15. Recovering the ‘Aryan worldview’: the Western Australian book publisher under scrutiny over far-right texts . The Guardian . 2024, January 15 “It’s just a joke”: why we need to pay attention to far-right humour . RightNow! Blog, Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX). 2024, January 8. Why it’s so hard to stop neo-Nazi public hate parades . The Age . 2023, November 12. Far-right groups targeting young people, inquiry finds . The Age . 2022, August 30. Right-wing parties line up for make-or-break Victorian state election . The New Daily . 2022, 22 June. Dr Jordan McSwiney on One Nation & Western Civilisation . Yeah Nah Pasaran! 2022, 9 June. Labor and the Liberals are waging an election meme war – but what is the point? The Guardian . 2022, May 1. Visiting Appointments 2023 - Visiting Fellow. Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, Norway. 2020 - Research Fellow, Digitalisation and the Transnational Public Sphere, Wizenbaum Institute, Berlin, Germany 2019 - Doctoral Fellow, WZB Berlin, Berlin, Germany

< Back Genevieve Johnson Associate About Genevieve Fuji Johnson studies and teaches democratic theory, feminist political thought, interpretive approaches to policy analysis, and a range of current public policy issues. She is a Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, Canada.

< Back The role of evidence, evidence-providers and the evidence-giving format in citizens' juries Jen Roberts, University of Strathclyde Tue 28 March 2017 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Three citizens’ juries were run in different locations across Scotland in 2013/14, each with varying proximity to built and planned wind farms. One of the aims of this multi-disciplinary research project explored how deliberative processes, such as citizens’ juries, could be used to engage citizens and inform policy on public issues. One of the key lessons for designing, organizing and facilitating citizens’ juries that arose from the project concerned the provision of information. This includes issues surrounding witness selection, the format of evidence provision, the evidence itself, and how the witnesses were supported through the project. Although the juries were successful overall, it was felt that the jurors might have benefited from more support to make sense of the issues at hand and relevance to their task. To enhance the valuable outcomes from this unique project it is important to establish if, and how, these issues could be avoided or managed for future deliberative processes. Here, we revisit the process and consider how it could be improved so that contested evidence might be put forward in a way that is most useful (supportive, informative) to participants and most fair to the witnesses presenting the evidence. To inform our work, we draw on the experiences from other citizens’ juries that have been conducted on environmental or energy topics together with the learnings from the citizens’ juries on wind farms in Scotland project. We also interview the witnesses involved in the wind farms project to draw on their perspectives. These data are synthesised to examine the role of witnesses in presenting expert information, the processes of doing so, and how different roles or formats affect the experience of the witness and the audience. This enables us to recommend processes or approaches that will encourage a fair environment. About the speaker Jennifer Roberts is a pioneering young researcher linking energy systems with social and environmental risk. She uses her technical background in geoscience to address questions on the social and environmental impacts of energy developments, including CCS, unconventional gas, and onshore wind. Her work aims inform how a low-carbon energy system can be optimised and implemented in a way that is acceptable for the environment and society. On the strength of her genuinely interdisciplinary research she was awarded the Scottish Energy Researcher of the Year 2015 - Energy Infrastructure and Society category. Jen’s work is closely linked with Scotland’s Centre of Expertise on Climate Change (ClimateXChange), which works to provide independent advice, research and analysis on climate change & policy in Scotland, and she regularly contributes to policy briefs, public events, and training workshops. Jen was the Research Co-ordinator for a ClimateXChange research project that conducted citizens’ juries in three locations in Scotland on the topic of onshore wind farm development, to trial the deliberative method and also to find out the publics’ views on the issue. The research highlighted some of the complexities of involving experts in deliberative processes, which is a theme she continues to follow in her research. Previous Next