I am a senior lecturer at the University of Southampton in the Department of Politics and International Relations and an associate external professor at the School of Collective Intelligence in Rabat.

 

At Southampton, I founded the Centre for Behavioural Experimental Action and Research (C-BEAR), and I am a member of the Centre for Democratic Futures (CdF).

 

My research explores the diffusion and impact of governance and social innovations aimed at deepening democracy in Public Administration, Parties, and Organizations (Democratic Innovations). For a list of publications here is my google scholar page.

 

I began working on Participatory Budgeting in Brazil and Minipublics in North America in the mid-2000s and subsequently explored a wide variety of other participatory and deliberative processes. Since 2012, half of my work has focused on e-deliberation, e-PB platforms, and hybrid innovations that integrate online and offline channels of participation, playful design, argument mapping, and AI.

 

One of my specialties is impact evaluation. Combining large surveys, field experiments, quantitative and qualitative analysis in a comparative perspective, I have evaluated cases ranging from Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and the United States.

 

My most recent research focuses on injecting Codesign to augment democratic innovations (see Phoenix project), regional laws to promote democratic innovations, Role Playing Games to teach democratic skills, argument mapping, and a return to the study of the diffusion of democratic innovations with a new Census of PB in Brazil (2024) and a parallel project in the UK. 

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News 2024

 

The PB Brazilian Census online phase is completed

 

I directed the first summer school on RCT at Southampton University

 

We helped deploy the Participedia Summer School in Cape Town

 

[Phoenix update] The partners have completed the evaluation 8 of the 11 Territorial Commissions of Codesign activities

 

C-BEAR won the Pippa Norris prize

 

[Phoenix update] We have finished the codesign of the pre/post surveys for the 11 Phoenix pilots

 

I got a bit of funding to redo the Brazilian PB Census

 

News 2023

 

[Phoenix update] Territorial Commissions of Codesigns are ongoing in 11 locations across Europe

 

I have got a bit of funding to assist the UK PB Network

 

We completed the Citizens' Assembly in Southampton

 

We did the first (at least I think it is the first) door knocking experiment applied to promote participation in a CA

 

In the fall I am on Sabbatical between Morocco, Italy and the UK

 

Demoplay project completed, we have a new version of EMPAVILLE!

 

Follow-up blog post in dialogic form with Kyle Redman in Deliberative Democracy Journal

 

Supporting Bologna CA evaluation coordination

 

The blog I wrote with Tiago Peixoto on Sortition and Representation has reached more than 5000 visualizations