Professor Graham Smith

I am Emeritus Professor at the University of Westminster. Previously I was Professor of Politics at the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) in the School of Social Sciences from 2003 to 2026. I have also worked at the Universities of Southampton (where I was Professor of Politics and Head of Department) and Strathclyde.

I am the founding Chair of the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA) funded by the European Climate Foundation. KNOCA aims to improve the commissioning, design, delivery, follow-up and evaluation of climate assemblies to enhance impact on climate governance.

I was one of the organisers of the University of Westminster Climate Assembly (UWCA) – the first citizens’ assembly in a UK university. I am collaborator with UNIDELIB– the Deliberating Universities Network. You can hear me talking about the UWCA project.

I have had the pleasure of being a visiting fellow at the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF); Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School; European University Institute, Florence; Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam; Åbo Akademi, Finland. I am an Honarary Fellow at the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity.

My research is on participatory democracy and democratic innovation, with a particular concern for participatory governance in the face of the climate and ecological crisis. My book Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation is widely recognised as key to the establishment of this area of study.

Based on my work with KNOCA, I have published the short, open access book We Need To Talk About Climate: How Citizens' Assemblies Can Help Us Solve the Climate Crisis. You can watch the online book launch.

Other publications include Democracy in a Pandemic: Participation in Response to Crisis- an open access collection edited with colleagues at the participation charity Involve - and Can Democracy Safeguard the Future?. Listen to me talking about democracy and the pandemic. Read a short synopsis of the argument about democracy and future generations, watch the book launch and hear me discussing these themes on RSA Bridges to the Future, Reasons to be Cheerful and the New Books Network.

I am a collaborator with the global Participedia network (funded by SSHRC) and was formerly Chair of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD).

Visit my Google Scholar page

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.