I am deeply fascinated by participatory democracy practices and have been actively involved in research and collaboration in this area since 2012. As part of the Participedia Project, led by Mark Warren (UBC) and Archon Fung (Harvard University), I contribute as a collaborator to this open-source, online database documenting public engagement processes and their associated public opinions worldwide.

My role has included designing surveys for experts and participants, analyzing the data, and applying my theoretical expertise on political participation. The project, funded by a $3 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada (2015), has explored democratic innovations and their potential to address governance challenges.

Currently, we are working on a paper that theorizes ‘When, Where, and Why Might Elected Political Elites Adopt Democratic Innovations?’, which is under review at Perspectives on Politics. While democratic deficits and innovations are widely discussed, our work focuses on understanding these issues from the perspective of elected officials. By identifying the problems of inclusion and collective decision-making that democratic innovations might solve, we propose ways these mechanisms could earn the trust of political elites. Our theory is grounded on the cases in the Participedia dataset (www.participedia.net).

Publications on Participatory Governance

I have also authored two papers that examine participatory governance in different contexts:

1.Reclaiming the Public Sphere in Turkey
Based on research conducted during the Gezi Park protest movement in 2012, this paper examines the participatory forums that emerged from this mass mobilization. The movement united individuals across ideological and social divides, inspiring widespread civic engagement. Using theoretical insights from Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, my article, “Reclaiming the Public Sphere in Turkey: Arendtian and Habermasian Interpretation of Forums,” was published in Research Turkey.

2.Water Materialities and Participatory Governance
This collaborative work, conducted with environmental researchers, investigates how access to natural resources impacts community participation. Focusing on Ghana and South Africa, we analyzed the role of water quality, access, and material conditions in shaping participatory engagement. For the second paper, I worked with environmental researchers to study the effect of accessing natural resources on community participation, and we published an article, entitled “Water Materialities and Participatory Governance: Implications of Water Quality, Access, and Conditions for Participatory Engagement in Ghana and South Africa,” in Society and Natural Resources.

Extending from my interest in participatory practices, I published on gender disparities in classroom participation and governance (See the Publications page).