Reflections on the 2024 Participedia Partner’s Conference and Summer School
Author: Nnamdi Nnake, PhD Candidate, History, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
June 2024 was a special month. Thanks to the 2024 Participedia Partner’s Conference and Summer School, a series of transnational events co-hosted in Cape Town, by Participedia and the Politics and Urban Governance Research Group (PUG Research) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Participedia is a global network and crowdsourcing platform, www.participedia.net, for researchers, educators, practitioners, policymakers, activists, and anyone interested in democratic innovations, where democratic denotes practices or institutions that potentially advance ideals of self-government, whether individually, or collectively, and across time, space, and geography; while innovations signifies practices or institutions that are relatively new to a context or place.
The Partner’s Conference held from June 6-7, and commenced with an experiential exercise on deep democracy, which gave all participants the opportunity to air their views on a variety of sociopolitical issues through multidimensional mapping. The key objective of this activity was to illustrate how numerous views can be given room for expression in democratic settings. This was followed by expert panels where the conference examined the work and plans of Participedia’s different clusters within thematic frames of: (1) accountability within and beyond the State; (2) charting new paths for representation, rights and new materialisms; (3) digital democracy; and (4) theories, practices and traditions of deliberation and transparency. Other elements of the Conference included a book launch for a collection of essays, Democracy and the Legacies of Truth and Reconciliation, co-edited by Professor Bonny Ibhawoh, the Director of Participedia.
Riding on the high of the Partner’s Conference, which climaxed with a workshop on big ideas for the next stage of Participedia, the 2024 Participedia School on Transnational Democratic Innovation opened in a hybrid format on June 10, connecting two in-person campuses at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC). For the next week, the Participedia School on Transnational Democratic Innovations, brought together a global cohort of graduate students, political scientists and theorists, policymakers, practitioners, and civil society activists to deliberate on citizen participation and test new ways of deepening democracy. Its fourfold objectives were to facilitate exchange between early career scholars and experts in the field; enable knowledge sharing through co-design and co-learning; knowledge synthesis; and professional development.
The Summer School encompassed several highlights, all delivered in a well-structured curriculum. The first day set the tone by laying the foundations for participants to appreciate the relevance of transnational decision making. This included a panel discussion themed, Challenges and Possibilities in Global Democratic Governance, and featuring Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute, and Ambassador Keisha McGuire of the Present and Future Institute. Another panel examined opportunities in global governance through hot topics like genome editing, AI and algorithms, as well as Guidelines for Regulating Digital Platforms. The next day, additional theoretical foundations were laid as participants were introduced to the principles of democratic innovation and their design. Over the next three days, these formed the basis for our application of Design Theory to democratic practices centred on participation. It was these activities that I found most engaging. Participants were split into groups that deliberated on innovative ways to solve problems of transnational governance. These included case studies on truth and reconciliation commissions, sanitation, and renewable energy. The Groups applied the Participedia School Design Project and Canvas to brainstorm on these issues from start to finish and develop policy recommendations.
On a lighter note, Cape Town had a variety of sights and sounds to offer the transnational group of visitors. From the depths of Robben Island, to the heights of Table Mountain, there were many cultural experiences to witness. As a Graduate researcher, the opportunity to network with experts in the field of democratic innovation was a welcome addition to my professional development as the Coady Institute offered a certificate for participation in the Participedia School. Indeed, there is much to look forward to at the next.
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