I am a research fellow and senior lecturer. At Dublin City University, I am currently involved in two research projects that address the potential of deliberation to address climate change (Horizon2020-project “EuComMeet”; IRC-funded project “COMDEL”).
I have been a research fellow and senior lecturer in political theory, empirical political science/democracy studies and political philosophy at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg (2016-2022) and a lecturer in applied ethics, political science, and political philosophy at Heidelberg University (2014-2017). My habilitation in Hamburg dealt with strategies for “Bridging Theory and Method in Researching Democratic Quality”.
I also am a co-convenor of the PSA's Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Specialist Group, a co-convenor of the DVPW’s Teaching and Learning Specialist Group and an Associate Editor of the interdisciplinary Journal Democratic Theory.
I was was a visiting research fellow and lecturer at the University of Canberra (Australia), Westminster University (London, UK), the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), the University of Nairobi (Kenya) and the Technical University of Kenya (Kenya).
I hold a MA in philosophy and political science and a PhD in political science.
My research – published e.g. in Political Studies, Policy & Internet, Political or Political Geography and in my monograph Radical Proceduralism (2021) – focuses on theories of democratic legitimacy, theoretical and empirical studies of deliberative democracy, environmental politics and approaches aiming at decolonizing/indigenousing democratic theory.
Ongoing Research Projects
At DCU, I am currently involved in two projects—COMDEL (Irish Research Council Laureate Grant) and EuComMeet (Horizon2020) that explore the potential of democratic deliberation to tackle challenges posed by the climate emergency—and to create the environment for political debates that are constructive, enhancing citizens’ reflectiveness letting them have their say in developing measures for dealing with complex policy issues associated with climate change/environmental crises. Especially COMDEL explores citizen deliberation’s potential to counteract the impact of vested interests (e.g. of different corporate actor and lobbyists) on political action—and the lack thereof.
Work-in-progress: Reconceptualising Emancipations—bottom up: Arguments and Pathways for ‘Grounding’ Democratic Theory in Participants’ Experience(s)
Democracy is usually understood as a community of self-governing, “autonomous” individuals or groups. Yet particularly for critical theorists, this ideal of self-governance is deeply intertwined with assumptions about emancipatory processes. While some theorists hold that only “emancipated” individuals or communities can truly govern themselves, others conceive of emancipation as the goal that should be achieved through democratic, inclusive politics. I suggest to take a step back from these debates to scrutinize existing understandings and to reconceptualize “emancipation”.
My point of departure is an analytical differentiation between personal and political emancipation. I then argue that established democratic theories usually provide us only with a vague – and potentially biased – understanding of emancipatory processes. Taking stock of existing theoretical notions, I particularly argue that decolonial, feminist and intersectional perspectives challenge us to develop a more in-depth understanding of the interrelationship between personal and political emancipation.
I argue that this enterprise requires a “methodological turn”: normative theorizing should ground understandings of personal and political emancipation in peoples’ lived experiences, their perspectives, and beliefs. These methodological rationales are based on grounded normative theory approaches. They also underly ongoing work and pilot studies that I conduct(ed) so in focus groups and semi-structured interviews with political activists, civil society representatives and “lay citizens” in Sub-Saharan Africa.