Public Debate: Citizen Participation in Central and Eastern Europe: mechanisms, challenges and practice ActiveLab is hosting a public discussion on the topic of civic participation with colleagues and experts from Central and Eastern Europe. The debate will focus on current trends, key obstacles that undermine the use and effective application of the participation model, as well as examples of good practices in societies facing similar challenges and socio-political realities. The working language will be English.

Participants (tbc): Paulina Pospieszna, Bettina Mitru, Irena Fiket;

Moderator: Dejan Bursać.

About participants:

Paulina Pospieszna is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland. She received her PhD (2010) in Political Science from the University of Alabama and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz and the University of Mannheim. Her main research interests include democracy promotion, civil society, and democratization.

Dániel Oross is Research Fellow at the Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre of Excellence. He received his PhD (2015) in Political Science from Corvinus University of Budapest, Institute of Political Science. His main research interests include political institutions and institution building, democratic innovations, political system of the Visegrad countries, electoral and voting behavior of young people, political participation, political socialization.

Bettina Mitru is a PhD Candidate in International Studies at Babes-Bolyai University Cluj and in Political Science at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research interests include party politics, democratic innovations and political participation.

Irena Fiket is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. She received her PhD (2010) in the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, University of Rome, La Sapienza and worked as a visiting researcher at SARENA (Center for European studies), University of Oslo and as a post-doctoral fellow at Universitiy of Siena, University of Florence and University of Bologna. Her current research interests are deliberative democracy, democratization, citizens’ participation, democratic innovation, social movements and the Western Balkans.