1st CDF Symposium—Re-imagining Democratic Politics Event
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- Time:
- 9:30-17:00
- Date:
- 2025-07-03 09:00:00 2025-07-04 16:00:00
- Venue:
- University of Southampton & Online
Event details
The Centre for Democratic Futures (CDF) brought together scholars from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Malta, Georgia, Australia, and beyond for two energetic hybrid days of discussion and play. From design-led policymaking and TV-facilitated deliberation to climate theatre and ocean democracy, every session stretched the democratic imagination.
Re-imagining Participation
The opening panel explored innovative practices designed to revitalise democratic participation beyond traditional institutions.
Brian Morgan (Ulster University) described using design methods to co-create a space for agonistic policy dialogue with the Rathlin Island community in Northern Ireland.
Lisa Basishvili (Tbilisi State University) showed how pairing a regional TV series with mini-publics can spark reasoned dialogue in Georgia’s polarised political climate.
David Graham (University College London) presented survey-experimental evidence that endorsements by citizens’ assemblies can sway attitudes and perceived legitimacy on certain policy issues.
Denise Baden (University of Southampton) introduced an interactive whodunnit, Murder in the Citizens’ Jury, which lets audiences deliberate climate policy and vote on the future of a proposed “House of Citizens”.
From Speech to Play
After lunch the symposium shifted from speech to play. Vanissa Wanick, Emily Bastable, and Kristina Risley (University of Southampton) presented the board game Lemonade. Participants first grappled with its mechanics of unequal resource distribution, then collaboratively re-designed the rules, exploring how collective decision-making can emerge from the bottom up.
Keynote by Dr Ariana Markowitz
The day closed with a compelling keynote by independent researcher and consultant Ariana Markowitz, who drew on her work in El Salvador to show how creative practice can document and disrupt urban violence, turning art into a rehearsal for democracy.
Re-imagining Foundations
The second day began by returning to democracy’s theoretical foundations.
Olivia Mendoza (University of Canberra) argued that the emotional labour sustaining deliberation is unevenly distributed and largely invisible, urging deliberative democrats to recognise and study it.
Ben Saunders (University of Southampton) proposed “asynchronous voting”: allowing the most knowledgeable or affected to cast ballots first, publishing interim results, and then giving everyone else an equal say—acknowledging expertise without abandoning one-person-one-vote.
Re-imagining Resistance
The final panel brought ecology and militancy to the fore.
Coen Schuckink (University of Antwerp) contended that the legitimacy of militant political tactics should depend on whether they emerge from democratically structured movements, not on abstract moral principles.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, Antje Scharenberg (University of Southampton) demonstrated that the ocean is a fruitful vantage point from which to rethink core democratic concepts such as representation and political subjectivity.
Roundtable
The symposium concluded with a roundtable in which organisers, CDF co-directors , and participants reflected on lessons learned and mapped future collaborations.
Across two stimulating days, the CDF Symposium offered not just critique but construction—assembling a rich, cross-disciplinary repertoire of experiments, theories, and tools for democratic futures.