Writing

Interviews

Presentations,
Keynotes & Debates

  • Designing Digital Democracy: Opportunities and Pitfalls

    Presentation at SoCentral, Oslo, organized by Sveinung Legard, OsloMet University (May 2026), centered on managing information flows in a structured but non-censorious fashion and designing processes to maintain freedom while avoiding co-optation by bad faith actors

  • The Cultural and Structural Dilemmae of Late-Stage Boomer Delusion

    Presentation at panel debate on the topic of ‘Forestalling Dystopia: Stratagems for Change’ (April 2026), focused on the core political beliefs of the Boomer generation and how avoiding addressing flaws in these beliefs will affect future inequality and social stratification

  • The Thirty Tyrants: What we can Learn from an Athenian Crisis of Democracy

    Presentation at the ‘Democracy and Tyranny’ event, organized by Plato's Academy Center (July 2025), centered on the historical temporary takeover of Athenian democracy by the Thirty Tyrants in 404/403 B.C. and their methods

  • Populism: A Response to Two-Tier Rule?

    Keynote Debate, Battle of Ideas, London (2024) with Thomas Fazi, Sabine Beppler-Spahl, Winston Marshall and Bruno Waterfield

  • Could Citizens’ Assemblies Save Democracy?

    Debate at Battle of Ideas, London (2024) with Sophie Harborne (DemocraFest) and Rich Wilson (Iswe Foundation)

  • Democracy in the Digital Age: A New (and Old) Model for Free and Equal Decision-Making

    Presentation at the Colloque International, La Democratie Numerique: Promesses et Illusions, Universite Cote d’Azur (2024)

  • The Challenges of Eurocentrism

    Panellist at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (2023)

  • Privatisation of Human Rights in Europe

    Symposium discussant of Gaetan Cliquennois’s European Human Rights Justice and Privatisation: The Growing Influence of Foreign Private Funds at the Matthias Corvinus Collegium, Budapest (2022)

  • Asha Centre

    Engage! Inspiring Speakers, UK (2022)

  • Global Policy Research Group Launch Event

    A discussion of Citizens Assemblies and Good Government, Sweden (September 2022)

  • People Power: Classical Athens and 21st Century Populism

    Lecture on the Athenian democratic institutions at University College Dublin, Classics Society (2021)

  • Why We Need Direct Digital Democracy Today

    Speaker at GovLab at NYU Tandon for the Future of Democracy Working Group (2020)

  • A Future for Everyone? Tech-Driven Democracy and How It Will Change Us

    Presentation at Brave New World Conference on Future Technology, Leiden, Netherlands (2021)

  • Awakening Democracy

    Contribution on Digital Tools underpinning Democracy at DemFest 2021, organized by the Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy, Australia

  • Deliberative Democracy & Sortition: Against Oligarchy

    Contribution detailing how some versions of deliberative democracy and sortition support oligarchy by systematically disenfranchising the majority of the population, at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics (2021)

  • Democracy at the Crossroads

    Full-length lecture addressing various myths about democracy, citizens' assemblies and digital democracy, Imagine! Belfast (2021)

  • The Future of Democracy

    Global Forum for Modern Direct Democracy organized by Democracy International, Bern, Switzerland (2020)

  • Demokratie und Bürgerbeteiligung (Democracy and Citizen Participation)

    Lecture at the Science, Technology & Ethics series organized by the Protestant Students' Association in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany (2020)

  • From Referendums to Citizens' Assemblies: Does Democracy Need a Makeover?

    Debate at the 2019 Battle of Ideas, London, UK with Alan Renwick, Polly Mackenzie, and James Panton

  • What can we learn from Ancient Greek democracy?

    Lecture at the 2019 Battle of Ideas, London, UK

  • Radical Municipalism Panel

    Speaking about participation in local government, event co-hosted by Imagine Festival, Belfast and OpenDemocracy (January 2019)

  • PB Works

    Speaking about participatory budgeting to civil servants and community groups, Belfast (January 2019)

  • OpenDemocracy Debate on Citizens' Assemblies and Sortition

    A debate on the democratic impact of citizens’ assemblies with Paul Braithwaite (Community Foundation, NI) and Mary Fitzgerald and Anthony Barnett of OpenDemocracy, Democracy Day, Belfast (Jan 2019)

  • Irish Citizens' Assemblies

    Presentation to Democracy International and Mehr Demokratie on citizens' assemblies in Dublin (January 2019)

  • The Roots of Deliberation

    Speaker at Democracy Day in Belfast on the origins of deliberative democracy and democratic innovation (2018)

  • When Citizens Assemble

    Public viewing and discussion in Edinburgh (to an audience of Scottish government officials) and Glasgow (in association with Common Weal) of the film series AllHandsOn (2018)

  • Digital DNA

    Panel discussing technology and democracy, eg. fake news, fact-checking, social media, Belfast (2018)

  • EUTH Open Summit

    Panellist at the EUTH Open Summit, Berlin on the impact of participatory innovation on youth engagement (2017)

  • Turning Digital Noise into Democratic Participation

    Speaking on Youth Engagement at the Digital Democracy Day in Brussels, organized by the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) (2017)

  • American Democracy?

    Panellist & Speaker at the Goldfarb Center, Colby College, United States, debating the crisis in American Democracy with fellow panellists Benjamin Page, Northwestern University and Peter Levine, Tufts University (2017)

  • Politics without Power: Decentralized Decision-Making

    Lecture on statistical discrepancies in elections that skew outcomes and how successfully playing these margins can be used to lock-in policy on an international level. It also detailed how communities can use decentralized mechanisms for collective decision-making while maintaining personal freedom and autonomy, Liberty Forum, New Hampshire (January 2017)

  • Innovations in European Democracy

    Presentation on digital democracy platforms, hosted by DemSoc and Dublin Institute of Technology (January 2017)

  • Democracy for a Multipolar World

    Presentation on how international institutions (IMF, UN, etc) could use democratic methods to peacefully resolve geopolitical conflict in an increasingly multipolar world, Russia Society, Trinity College Dublin (2017)

  • Enclosing the Democratic Commons: Private Organizations and the Legislative Process

    Paper based on original research on a large data-set of meetings between private organizations and European Union commissioners and the relationship to legislation, presented at the Allied Social Sciences Association conference, San Francisco (2016)

  • Conceptual Challenges for Political Economy and Democracy

    Paper presented at the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) annual conference in Johannesburg, South Africa (2015) 

  • Electoral Regimes and Socio-Economic Inequality: Factors Exacerbating the Crisis

    Paper presented at the Allied Social Sciences Association conference, Boston (2015)

  • Democracy: False Hopes or a False God?

    Guest lecture at Queen’s University, Belfast, hosted by Professor Jean Allain (March 2013)