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Research Assistant < Back Elaine Dos Santos Research Assistant About Elaine Dos Santos worked as Research Assistant at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the Australian National University from 2010 to 2013.

Former PhD student < Back Melissa Lovell Former PhD student About Melissa Lovell is a writer, researcher and political scientist. She has a particular interest in the way that politicians and other political players frame policy problems and possibilities. Her research chiefly focuses on Australian Aboriginal Affairs governance and she is currently employed as a Research Officer at the National Centre for Indigenous Studies (NCIS), Australian National University.

< 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

Research Assistant < Back Alessandra Pecci Research Assistant About Alessandra worked as Research Assistant at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the Australian National University from 2009 to 2011.

< Back When anger turns hip-hop: The deliberative capacity of teenagers' festive protests in Japan Kei Nishiyama, University of Canberra Tue 6 February 2018 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract As one of several new forms of nonviolent activism, “festive” protests, or “protestival,” have received considerable attention from scholars and activists alike. By employing fun-centric and performance-based actions (e.g. singing hip-hop, writing songs, dancing, drawing street arts, or marching in a parade with colourful and humorous costumes), festive protestors form and sustain their movements, challenge dominant discourses, and drive social change in a unique manner. Importantly, festive protests can provide politically marginalized people, in this case teenagers, with a variety of opportunities to become involved in social change as they utilize teenager-friendly means of action. In this presentation, I will examine the democratic capacity of teenagers’ festive protests. In particular, I will seek to answer the question, what are the democratic purposes, contributions and meanings of teenagers’ festive protests? I will evaluate the democratic contribution of teenagers’ festive protests using the deliberative systems framework. This framework helps us to consider how the teenagers’ various communicative actions in social movements contribute to induce authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation across society thereby evaluating the democratic contribution of teenagers’ festive protests. This presentation will focus on the case of teenagers’ festive protests in Japan in the 2010s. I will contrast the case of the 2010s with protests in the 1960s. Both sets of protests are recognised as historically significant periods of teenagers’ protesting in Japan, motivated by the same issue (anti-war). However, the two sets of protests utilised radically different means (violent and festive), thereby leading to different consequences. The preliminary analysis of (a) repertoires of contention, (b) the type and content of speech actions, and (c) the political and social responses shall reveal the communicative and inclusive functions that teenagers’ festive protests potentially have in deliberative systems. About the speaker Kei Nishiyama is a Ph.D. student at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance.. His Ph.D. resarch - under the supervision of Prof John Dryzek and Dr Selen Ercan - investigates the way in which children can act as agents (rather than merely future citizens) of deliberative democracy. By employing the deliberative system appraoch as a theoretical framewrok, Kei considers pathways in which children's various deliberative actions (including deliberation in public space, participating in activist groups, deliberating in schools, deliberating with families or friends) can be incorporated in a wider deliberative system. Previosuly Kei studied philosophy of education at Rikkyo University (Japan) and gained a Bachelor (Arts in Education) and a Master Degree (Pedagogy). Kei is also a dialogue practitoner (6 years experience) of one deliberative practice in schools and society, called "philosophy for children." Kei is currently a part-time lecturer at the Department of Behavioral Science of Motivation, Correspondence College, Tokyo Future University, Japan. He lectures on politics of schooling, namely multiculturalism and identity problems in the context of school education. Previous Next

Claudia Benham, Simon Niemeyer and Hannah Barrowman < Back Great Barrier Reef Futures Citizens’ Jury Investigator(s): Claudia Benham, Simon Niemeyer and Hannah Barrowman Funded through James Cook University, the Project Team includes: Claudia Benham Simon Niemeyer Hannah Barrowman Project Description Simon Niemeyer and Hannah Barrowman are collaborating with Claudia Benham (James Cook University) in a project trialling deliberative engagement on the future of the Great Barrier Reef. The three-day Citizens’ Jury examines issues of reef management and regional economic development in the context of climate change.

< 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

Research Intern < Back Atosha Birongo Research Intern About Atosha Birongo is doing research on citizen participation in the world's first Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency. She is a third-year student majoring in Government and Policy at the Faculty of Business, Government and Law. She joined the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance as research intern in 2022.

< Back UPCOMING: DOES FOOD DEMOCRACY MATTER? LINKING THE DELIBERATIVE QUALITY OF SOY AND COFFEE VALUE CHAINS TO ECOLOGICAL 'FOODPRINTS' The global food system is facing a multiple sustainability crisis. Agri-food value chains are among the main drivers of humanity’s overstepping the planetary boundaries related to climate change, loss of biodiversity (genes, species, and habitats) deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution, and nutrient imbalances. At the same time, key food producers like small- and medium-scale farmers are being driven from their land as a result of expanding extractivist resource use and highly asymmetric market access. Among the root causes of the global food system’s sustainability crisis are the multidimensional and increasingly asymmetric power relations – defined as the uneven capacity to influence goals, processes, and outcomes of governance – between the actors involved. Peasant communities, family farmers, rural workers, women, small-scale traders, artisanal food processors, and resource-poor consumers remain widely excluded from the decision-making processes through which agri-food value chains are governed. Deliberation – citizens’ political conversation and collective decision-making – has been described as a “partial antidote” to unequal power relations and as an important lever for rendering decision-making less power-driven. Democracy research argues that deliberation brings to the fore public goods and society’s ecological interests. However, empirical knowledge supporting these claims in the context of food and agriculture is scarce. This research aims at understanding whether and how deliberation affects ecological outcomes (“foodprints”) of soy and coffee value chains and power asymmetries among their key actors. Specific aims are to (1) determine the deliberative quality of selected agri-food value chains; (2) understand the implications of varying degrees of deliberation for power relations among key actors; (3) assess the selected agri-food value chains’ ecological foodprints; and (4) determine how deliberative quality relates to power asymmetries and ecological foodprints. We take a mixed-methods approach in four interlinked research streams: (1) Deliberative quality, comprising analysis of soy and coffee value chains and their key actors, institutional analysis, and discourse analysis to determine deliberative spaces and deliberative quality, and (2) Power asymmetries, focusing on whether and how the deliberative quality of agri-food value chains affects power asymmetries from key actors’ perspective – with semi-structured interviews, participant observation, focus groups, and document review applied in both streams; (3) Ecological foodprints, comprising life cycle inventories to measure the selected value chains’ resource use intensity, land use, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste/nutrient management, using semi-structured interviews, participant observation, as well as document and database review; and (4) Integration, applying process tracing to infer causal relationships between deliberative quality, power asymmetries, and ecological foodprints. BIO Dr. Johanna Jacobi is an Assistant Professor for Agroecological Transitions at ETH Zürich. She studied Geography, Biology and Social Anthropology. Her master thesis investigated wastewater-irrigated agrobiodiversity in peri-urban agriculture in Hyderabad, India. For her PhD studies at the University of Bern, she conducted research on the resilience of cocoa farms in Bolivia to climate change. In a post-doctoral project at UC Berkeley, she focused on agroforestry in Bolivia, where she then lived and worked in a transdisciplinary action- research project for several years. Her research focuses on agroecology as a transformative science, a practice and a social movement, and on power relations in food systems with approaches and methods from political ecology. Johanna Jacobi is also a member of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA). Previous Next

< Back Deliberative land use planning Hoi Kong, McGill University Tue 6 May 2014 Fishbowl, Building 24, University of Canberra Abstract Scholars have long argued that land use planning processes do not promote meaningful citizen engagement. The project that I will discuss responds to this concern by creating an innovative design institution: the digitally-mediated community-based urban design studio. The interdisciplinary design studio deploys electronic technology to facilitate deliberative democratic participation in land use planning processes, in a borough of Montreal. A current large scale development project that has the potential to significantly affect the stock of affordable housing in the borough is the studio¹s current object of study. Students in law, urban planning and architecture, under the supervision of professors, will generate computer-modelled proposals. The studio will, on a dedicated website, invite comments about these proposals from the community and the resulting comments will be incorporated in subsequent draft proposals. The final proposal that will result from this iterative process will be brought to the attention of the relevant planning authorities for their comments. Towards the end of the project¹s three-year term, the team-members will consult with borough officials, city planners and local community organizations about whether and how procedures based on the studio¹s work might be incorporated into the official land use planning consultation process. This project is being developed in collaboration with the Cornell e-Regulations Initiative, which has developed online consultations with federal agencies, and in the presentation, I will discuss what mutual lessons have been learned from the two projects¹ experiments with developing technological tools of deliberative citizen engagement. About the speaker Hoi Kong teaches and researches in the areas of Constitutional Law, Comparative Law, Administrative Law, and Municipal Law. From 2002 to 2003, he was law clerk to Justices Marie Deschamps and Claire L¹Heureux-Dubé at the Supreme Court of Canada. From 2003 to 2006, he was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia University, and from 2006 to 2009, he was an Assistant Professor of Law, cross-appointed with the School of Urban and Regional Planning, at Queen¹s University. Hoi Kong joined the Faculty of Law of McGill University in August 2009 and he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada. He was named a Hydro-Québec Scholar in Sustainable Development Law in 2012. Previous Next

Simon Niemeyer < Back Deliberative democracy and climate change: building the foundations of an adaptive system Investigator(s): Simon Niemeyer Funded through Future Fellowship (FT110100871) ($629,090), Simon Niemeyer (Chief Investigator) Project Description This research seeks to develop an appropriate conception of deliberative democracy to identify those elements of democratic systems that impede the ability to identify and respond to the challenges posed by climate change and identify shortcomings in the theory of deliberative democracy and develop solutions. It does so using empirical evidence relating to the operation of deliberation in real world settings, including evidence from a sister ARC funded Discovery project on mechanisms for scaling up deliberation. As well as contributing to the theory of deliberative democracy and earth systems governance, the research will produce practical recommendations and contribute to public debate.

< Back Tamirace Fakhoury Associate About Tamirace Fakhoury's core research and publication areas are power sharing and political transitions in divided societies, and refugee and migration governance. She is is an associate professor in Political Sciences and International Affairs at the Lebanese American University.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow < Back Jensen Sass Postdoctoral Research Fellow About Jensen works at the intersection of normative political theory and the empirical study of corporations, technology, and the public sphere. He is also interested in corporate power and democratic politics, in particular the regulation of new technologies that promise to transform previously settled norms and institutions.

Latest News - Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance < Back Democratic Transformations: A conversation on systemic change 12 Jan 2024 6 February 2024 Juliet Room, Verity Lane Market, Sydney Building, 50 Northbourne Avenue, Canberra ACT Reception: 5:30 pm Panel discussion: 6:00 – 7:15 pm Democracies’ responses to environmental crises, health emergencies, and racial violence have been unsatisfactory, to say the least. Hyper-partisan politics have taken over our representative democracies, rendering our democratic institutions vulnerable to political deadlocks and cheap political point-scoring. While there are many reasons to lose trust in our democracy, there are also many reasons to fight for it. You are invited to join a conversation on how we can transform Australia’s democracy and chart pathways for systemic change. Our discussion will kick off with three international speakers who will share lessons from democratic innovations that have taken off all over the world and demonstrate how randomly selected citizen bodies, decolonising and anti-racist action, and listening to nature and nonhumans can transform democracies today. This will be followed by an open discussion, where audiences can propose their own ideas for democratic transformation. Speakers Hans Asenbaum is the author of The Politics of Becoming: Anonymity and Democracy in the Digital Age. He is senior research fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance at the University of Canberra. Yves Sintomer is the author of The Government of Chance Sortition and Democracy from Athens to the Present. He is a Professor of Political Science at the Institut Universitaire de France. Melissa Williams is the founding director of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation. This event launches the new blog series on Democratic Transformations led by the Centre for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance and the European Consortium for Political Research. Read the blog here . Registration is a must — secure your spot now through this link .

< Back Lyn Carson Associate About Lyn Carson has taught and researched in the field of deliberative democracy, asking how the wider public can help to resolve policy challenges. She was involved in convening Australia's first Consensus Conference, the first Deliberative Polls, the first Australian Citizens' Parliament, and numerous Citizens' Juries and Community Summits.

Simon Niemeyer, John S. Dryzek, Nicole Curato, Andrè Bächtiger and Mark E. Warren < Back A Metastudy of Public Deliberation: Updating Theory and Practice Investigator(s): Simon Niemeyer, John S. Dryzek, Nicole Curato, Andrè Bächtiger and Mark E. Warren Funded through a Discovery Project (DP180103014) ($526,411), the Project Team includes: · Simon Niemeyer, Chief Investigator · John S. Dryzek, Chief Investigator · Nicole Curato, Chief Investigator · Andrè Bächtiger, Partner Investigator · Marina Lindell, Partner Investigator · Mark E. Warren, Partner Investigator · Hannah Barrowman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow · Francesco Veri, Postdoctoral Research Fellow · Nardine Alnemr, PhD student Project Description The project combines a meta-study and comparative case study to develop a leading edge understanding of political deliberation by analysing and synthesising results from available studies of deliberation. It aims to reconcile conflicting findings and provide the first comprehensive, theoretically-grounded account of defensible claims about political deliberation. The project will compile the source material and findings in a publicly-available database to facilitate standardisation and enhancement of future research in the field. It will seek to settle important questions that remain among deliberative democrats and, more practically, facilitate avenues for democratic reform in an area where the need for renewal is increasingly pressing.

< Back Citizen agency in democratic innovation: insights from citizen-led governance innovations (CLGIS) Carolyn Hendriks & Albert Dzur Tue 17 July 2018 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract Many aspects of contemporary politics and its institutional practices frustrate citizens. But what kinds of democratic reforms do citizens wish to see, and how do they wish to achieve and sustain them? Most scholars and practitioners of democratic innovation assume that citizens would prefer to engage in politics via more deliberative and participatory forums. However, as critics have argued participatory forums can be piecemeal and tokenistic, and often disempower and co-opt citizens by serving the state and corporate interests (e.g. Lee, McQuarrie, and Walker 2015). For insights into how to make democratic reform more substantive and sustained, we examine citizen-led, action-oriented, and highly pragmatic forms of democratic innovation. We are particularly interested in the collective journeys that citizens themselves embark on to resolve — not just participate in — traditional public policy problems. In this paper we empirically examine various cases of Citizen-Led Governance Innovation (CLGI) where citizens are creating democratic pathways to their own policy and reform endeavours. We show how these citizen innovators are not waiting to be invited into government, or agitating from the sidelines. Instead they are taking proactive and pragmatic steps to address policy failures or dysfunctional institutions. In so doing, citizens self-organise and adopt simple, inclusive, and replicable procedures that foster citizen buy-in and ownership. Citizen agency in CLGIs differs from what is found in other forms of democratic innovation, and related civic practices, such as activism, community organising, and volunteer work and may help address concerns about substance and sustainability. We consider the implications of our findings for debates on democratic innovation and, more broadly, deliberative democracy. About the speakers Carolyn Hendriks is an Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. Her work examines democratic aspects of contemporary governance, particularly with respect to participation, deliberation, inclusion and representation. She has taught and published widely on democratic innovation, public deliberation, interpretive methods, network governance and environmental politics. Her current research projects are exploring the possibilities of democratic innovation within conventional and alternative modes of political participation. Carolyn is an appointed member of newDemocracy's Research Committee and sits on the editorial board of several international journals, including the European Journal of Political Research. Albert W. Dzur is a democratic theorist with an interest in citizen participation and power-sharing in education, criminal justice, and public administration. He is the author of Democracy Inside: Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places (Oxford, in press); Rebuilding Public Institutions Together: Professionals and Citizens in a Participatory Democracy (Cornell, 2017); Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury (Oxford, 2012); Democratic Professionalism: Citizen Participation and the Reconstruction of Professional Ethics, Identity, and Practice (Penn State, 2008);and a co-editor of Democratic Theory and Mass Incarceration (Oxford, 2016). His interviews with democratic innovators appear in Boston Review, The Good Society, Restorative Justice: an International Journal, and National Civic Review. He is a professor in the political science and philosophy departments at Bowling Green State University. Previous Next

< Back Interconnecting deliberative systems: Functions and agents of transmission Stephen Elstub, Newcastle University Tue 5 July 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract In recent times, the dominant focus in debates in the field of deliberative democracy has been on deliberative systems. The principal aim of the systemic approach is to promote deliberative democracy at the mass scale by utilising a division of labour in communicative activity between a diversity of interconnected parts. Despite this, ‘interconnection’ represents a lacuna within the systemic approach to deliberative democracy. There is broad agreement that public and empowered spaces need to be connected and that some form of discursive transmission is required to achieve this, however, little detail has been provided on what functions are vital to transmission, what type of agents can fulfil these functions, and how these agents could operate together. This paper contributes to filling this gap by identifying vital systemic transmission functions: dispersion, filtration, and penetration, which are necessary to avoid systemic pathologies emerging. It then proceeds to analyse the extent the media, mini-publics, and interest groups can contribute to fulfilling these transmission functions respectively. About the speaker Stephen Elstub ( stephen.elstub@ncl.ac.uk ) is a Lecturer in British Politics at the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University. His research interests are on deliberative democracy, citizen participation, civil society, public opinion and political communication. He is the author of Towards a Deliberative and Associational Democracy (Edinburgh University Press 2008), editor of Democracy in Theory and Practice (Routledge 2012) and co-editor of Deliberative Democracy: Issues and Cases (Edinburgh University Press 2014). He is also the associate editor of the journal Representation. Previous Next

< Back Public support for citizens' assemblies selected through sortition: Survey and experimental evidence from 15 countries Jean-Benoit Pilet (Universite libre de Bruxelles) and Damien Bol (King's College London) Tue 16 March 2021 8:00pm-9:00pm Virtual seminar Abstract As representative democracies are increasingly criticized, a new institution is becoming popular in academic circles and real-life politics: asking a group of citizens selected by lot to deliberate and formulate policy recommendations on some contentious issues. Although there is much research on the functioning of such citizens’ assemblies, there are only few about how the population perceives them. We explore the sources of citizens’ attitudes towards this institution using a unique representative survey from 15 European countries. We find that those who are less educated, as well as those with a low sense of political competence and an anti-elite sentiment, are more supportive of it. Support thus comes from the ‘enraged’, rather than the ‘engaged’. Further, we use a survey experiment to show that support for citizens’ assemblies increases when respondents know that their fellow citizens share the same opinion than them on some issues. About the speakers Jean-Benoit Pilet is professor of political science at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium). He is coordinating the project POLITICIZE. Non-elected politics. Cure or Curse for Representative Democracy? (ERC Consolidator Grant). Within this project, he has worked on public support for deliberative and direct democracy, as well as on technocratic attitudes. He has recently published two articles (with Camille Bedock) on public support for sortition in France and in Belgium: Enraged, engaged, or both? A study of the determinants of support for consultative vs. binding mini-publics (Representation, 2020) and Who supports citizens selected by lot to be the main policymakers? A study of French citizens (Government & Opposition, 2020). Damien Bol is an Associate Professor and Director of the Quantitative Political Economy Research Group in King’s College London. His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, political behavior, and political economy with a focus on elections. He tries to understand people's experience of representative democracy across countries and political systems. Previous Next

< Back Priya Kurian Associate About Priya Kurian's research is interdisciplinary and spans the areas of environmental politics and policy; science and technology studies; women, culture and development; and sustainable development. She is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.