Leverhulme success

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Posted on 23 May 2011

Professor Andrew Dobson has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship worth £39,169  to carry out research on 'Democracy and Listening' over 19 months (May, 2011).

'It is curious,' says Professor Dobson, 'that although good listening is much prized in daily conversation, it has been almost completely ignored in that form of political conversation we know as democracy'. 

He aims to show that both democratic theory and democratic practice would be re-invigorated by attention to listening.  His discussion of why listening has been ignored will lead him to enquire into the very nature of politics, and to suggest a range of ways in which listening could both improve political processes (particularly democratic ones) and enhance our understanding of them – including where they don't always work as well as we might want them to. 

Professor Dobson has secured a contract with Oxford University Press to publish a book  Listening for Democracy, and there he will argue that whatever conception of democracy we are working with, the act and art of listening is (or should be) an integral part of the democratic process.

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