Events
“Thinking Our Way Out of This”: Cognitive Approaches to the Crisis of Democracy
- Time
- 3pm - 4.30pm
- Date
- 20 Sep 2025
- Duration
- 90 minute(s)
Symposium, supported by UCC Futures – Collective Social Futures
Online panel, plus in-person discussion (ORB G27, seminar room)
Teams link to join online: Cognitive Approaches to the Crisis of Democracy | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams
How can we preserve civil society in what some have described as a 'world without facts'? This interdisciplinary symposium brings together scholars of politics, psychology and social sciences to discuss some of the new difficulties that democracies face, and to consider some possible ways forward.
The event is free and open to the public, both online and in-person. Our format will be a series of short (10-15 minute) presentations, followed by Q&A with the panelists, and discussion.
Speakers will include:
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Scott Lucas (Department of Political Science, University College Dublin): “Are we doomed to idiocracy?”
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Gizem Arikan (Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin): Authoritarianism, religiosity and democratic values
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Curtis Puryear (Department of Computational Social Science, UNC) Digital technology, moral values and group conflict
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Stephan Lewandowsky (Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol UK) "Honest liars and the threat to Democracy"
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Diana Mutz (Department of Politics, University of Pennsylvania): Deliberative versus participatory democracy
Chaired by Dr Michael Booth, Department of English, UCC.