Key facts and figures
- Date: May 21st, 2026, 9h30 – 16h30
- Location: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Campus Woudestijn, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50 (see program for specific location of the sessions)
- Speakers: Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin (TU Eindhoven), Shannon Spruit (Populytics), Jan Maly (WU Wien), Pierre-Etienne Vandamme (UCLouvain).
- Program: see this link
Description
Democracy can mean many things, and its meaning has evolved quite a bit over time. It is now commonly associated with electoral representation through the "one person, one vote" principle, and with a party-based political landscape. However, there are and have been many other formats for collective decision-making and public consultation that can be said to be as democratic, if not more democratic than the currently prevailing one. There is a rich literature on different types of deliberative forums and citizen assemblies in which regular citizens are elected by lot to talk about political issues. These are typically seen as complementing representative forms of democracy and in some ways representing "the people" better. Moreove, various digital innovations invite alternative, more dynamic types of representation, richer forms of public consultation going beyond mere voting, including participatory budgeting and online deliberation.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together experts on specific types of and questions about democratic innovation, from a multi- and cross-disciplinary perspective. The workshop is specifically aimed towards graduate students as well as other non-experts who are interested in the latest state of the art findings on various topics related to democratic innovation. It will consist of four talks by experts, followed by a plenary Q&A and discussion about challenges for (the science of) democratic innovations.
More info about the speakers
- Jan Maly has a PhD in computer science from TUVienna and worked there and in Amsterdam as a postdoc, before becoming assistant professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien). He is an expert on computational social choice and its application to participatory budgeting. In a more recent project he teams up with political scientists, investigating i.a. citizens’ preferences about social choice rules in the context of participatory budgeting.
- Shannon Spruit has a PhD in philosophy from TU Delft. She is co-founder and co-director of Populytics, a TU Delft spinoff that develops innovative methods for digital public consultation, most notably the method of Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE).
- Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin has a PhD in theoretical computer science from TU Berlin and is currently assistant professor at TU Eindhoven. She is an expert on participatory budgeting, apportionment, liquid democracy, and fair division. More recently she also published on sampling methods for citizen assemblies.
- Pierre-Etienne Vandamme is assistant professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain). His research focuses on theories of democracy, democratic innovations and theories of justice. He is the author of Démocratie et justice sociale (Vrin, 2021). In his published work he argues i.a. for a right to more expressive voting methods and investigates tensions between democratic innovations and electoral, representative democracy.
Practical Information
Participation is free of charge. To participate, please register via email: vandeputte@esphil.eur.nl. Registration closes on May 7th, 9h00 CEST.
The ENCODE workshops are organized bi-annually at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy of Economics (Erasmus School for Philosophy, Erasmus University of Rotterdam), as part of the NWO-funded ENCODE project (VI.Vidi.191.105).
