Team and contact
The IOS-Platform Future of Democracy is an interdisciplinary network of scholars who study the major transformations of and challenges to democracy in past and present.
Are you interested in joining the Futures of Democracy Platform? Would you like to subscribe to our mailing list? Do you have an idea for a new research project, collaboration or initiative? If so, please get in touch by emailing our student assistant Wouter de Jong w.dejong2@uu.nl.
Its core team of scholars comprises:
Dr. Devin Vartija is the coordinator and lecturer of the course ‘Democracy and Democratization’ in the master’s program History of Politics and Society. This is a popular elective course that charts the history of the ideas central to democratic governance from antiquity to the present, with a focus on the West but also with attention paid to non-Western societies.
Dr. Lars Behrisch is the coordinator and lecturer of the level 3 bachelor course ‘Democracy: Historical Perspectives and Philosophical Arguments’ in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program. This course traces the main historical contexts in which democracy has emerged as an idea, practice, and set of institution and read primary sources to be able to understand the thoroughgoing transformation of democracy across time and space.
Dr. David Napolitano is the coordinator and lecturer of the level 3 bachelor course ‘Cities and Citizenship’ in the honour history program. In this course, students explore the foundations of the modern citizen state by comparing it to Athenian democracy, the expanding citizenship in the Roman Empire and the citizenry in cities and city states during the medieval period.
Dr. Maurits de Jongh is an assistant professor in the Ethics Institute, which is part of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Utrecht University. His research is motivated by a desire to understand the role of state power in promoting values like justice, efficiency, solidarity, and democracy. It is situated in the interdisciplinary field of philosophy, politics and economics (PPE).