Our people

I joined the University of Westminster in November 2012 as Professor of Politics in the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD), Department of Politics and International Relations. Previously I was Professor of Politics and Head of Department at the University of Southampton where I worked from 1999. From 1997 to 1999 I was a Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde.

My first degree is in Chemistry, my Masters in Environmental Science, my PhD in green political theory. It's a long story!

For five months from Feb 2010 I was a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence; and in the Fall Semester 2013, Senior Visiting Scholar on the Democracy Program at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School.

My main research interests are in democratic theory and practice, environmental politics and the politics of the third sector/social economy.

Watch a video of my Inaugural Lecture on Democratic Innovations on YouTube.

I am the module leader of SPIR510 State and Society and SPIR509 Innovations in Democratic Practice - both second year core modules for BA Politics and optional for other programmes.

PhD supervision

I am an experienced PhD supervisor and am interested in supervising students in areas of democratic theory and practice and environmental politics.

Research students

Hans Asenbaum, ‘Power, Identity and Anonymity in Digital Democratic Innovations'

Emmeline Cooper, 'Pension Funds, Sustainable Investing and the Promise of Innovative Corporate Governance'

Martin King, ‘Deliberation and Decision Making Online: Evaluating Platform Design’

Mary Houston, 'The Impact of New Media on Citizen Participation in the Policy Process' (University of Southampton).

Tom Rushby, 'Towards a Feasible Household Carbon Allowance Policy' (University of Southampton).

My current research focuses on three main areas. First, on democratic innovations - institutions designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process. This work builds on the theoretical approach initially developed in my book Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation.

I am Chair of the Research Committee of Participedia, a global network and knowledge platform for democratic innovations, including research groups at the Universities of British Columbia and Harvard. The network is currently funded by SSHRC (Canada), with earlier research on practitioner engagement funded by the ESRC Imagine Connected Communities consortium.

I am co-investigator on the ESRC funded Democracy Matters project that has organised pilot constitutional assemblies – I was Academic Director of Assembly South. I am also an international co-investigator for the Cherry-picking: The Results of Participatory Processes project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

Secondly, I am combining my interests on democratic theory and institutional design with environmental politics on a book project tentatively titled Designing Democracy for the Long Term. This will investigate the drivers of democratic myopia and potential institutional remedies. This research feeds into and is informed by my work as Chair of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development.

A final area of research focuses on the relationship between modes of environmental governance and the shaping of pro-environmental social practices. I have led two significant RCUK funded projects that have investigated the role of third sector/community organisations in promoting low-carbon practices. The Role of Community-based Initiatives in Energy Saving was an interdisciplinary project engaged in experimental and comparative research that ran from 2010-2014. I also co-directed the environmental stream of research in the Third Sector Research Centre.