The Future of Democracy Working Group at the Institute for Public Knowledge and The GovLab at NYU Tandon invite you to a conversation between Dr. Roslyn Fuller and Prof. Beth Simone Noveck.

In this participant-led talk, Dr. Fuller will bring to life her vision of a mass, direct, digital democracy and show how the principles of ancient Athenian direct democracy can be resurrected using digital technology.

Specifically, Dr. Fuller will discuss such topics as: why we should learn from the politics of ancient Greece, Rome and the United States; why we need mass digital democracy now, how it would help us deal with the current pandemic and what institutions we need to support it; how democracy, or the lack thereof, has impacted international institutions (e.g. United Nations, International Monetary Fund); the place of experts and why often conflict in politics is a good thing; the danger of using citizens’ assemblies or sortition removed from its historical context; the myth of the irrational, gullible or ignorant voter.

Dr. Roslyn Fuller is a former academic and expert on electoral systems, historical democracy and digital democracy who now heads the Dublin-based Solonian Democracy Institute. The author of five books, including the Orwell Prize-nominated Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose (Zed Books, 2015) and In Defence of Democracy (Polity, 2019), Roslyn frequently contributes to print, radio and broadcast media (BBC, Forbes, The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, etc.) on issues relating to democracy as well as to international law. Born in Canada, she wrote her bar exams with a specialization in public international law in Lower Saxony, Germany before moving to Ireland to write her PhD at Trinity College, Dublin. Roslyn has run in two election campaigns as an Independent candidate in Ireland, and was a member of the Advisory Board of the Citizens’ Assembly of Northern Ireland.

Follow Roslyn on Twitter: @roslynfuller

Beth Simone Noveck directs the Governance Lab (GovLab) and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. She is a Professor in Technology, Culture, and Society at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and a Fellow at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy appointed her as the state’s first Chief Innovation Officer in 2018. Previously, Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative under President Obama. UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government.