News and Events
New Horizon Europe Project 2024-2027: INSPIRE
Representative democracy is undergoing a deep crisis of legitimacy. Climate assemblies, participatory budgeting, and civic tech are examples of democratic innovations that connect the voices of everyday people to decision-makers. On the one hand, these participatory and deliberative democracy (PDD) processes are celebrated for their potential in addressing political distrust and polarisation by deepening public engagement. On the other hand, they are accused of being cosmetic solutions to deep-seated problems that continue to exclude already disempowered groups (along socioeconomic, gender, racial, physical, and mental ability lines).
INSPIRE (Intersectional Space of Participation: Inclusive, Resilient, Embedded) is a new Horizon Europe-funded project that aims to strengthen intersectional inclusion within participatory deliberative processes. INSPIRE sets out to create participatory spaces that are: inclusive, starting from the needs and assets of marginalised groups; resilient to changes in government and developing upon existing grassroots work to support community resilience; and adaptively embedded within the wider public sphere and in productive relationships with policymaking institutions.
INSPIRE is coordinated by Dr Sonia Bussu at the University of Birmingham and Professor Brigitte Geissel at Goethe University Frankfurt with 17 partners from Northern, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. The Consortium includes academics, practitioners, policy experts and digital designers, all committed to widen the scope and reach of democracy, using creative methods and margin-responsive approaches to design.
The project includes five research Work Packages that will carry out:
- macro and meso-level research on the social, economic, political and cultural conditions that shape intersectional equality within participatory assemblages and affect embeddedness and resilience of PDD processes;
- micro-level analysis of spaces of participation codesigned with marginalised groups to test our intersectional assemblage-informed approach, tapping into the consortium expertise in arts-based, creative and participatory digital methods;
- coproduction of new knowledge with public officials and a range of stakeholders to evaluate and compare inclusive approaches to participation and reflect on ways to pragmatically design and implement participatory processes that are intersectionally inclusive.
INSPIRE’s UCC partner is Dr Catherine Forde from the School of Applied Social Studies. Catherine will coordinate a pilot project that will co-design participatory spaces with a group of women from migrant backgrounds to contribute to public policy development in County Kildare, using a creative, participative and inclusive methodology. The study will be co-coordinated with Civiq, a CSO that specialises in public opinion and community engagement research.