A booklet by Oliver Escobar, with photographs from Emilio Pérez.

Published by Edinburgh Beltane (UK Beacons for Public Engagement).

Free PDF HERE.

For a free hard copy please fill up this form.

The rhetoric of dialogue is sometimes adopted rather uncritically in academic, organizational, and policy circles. Too often that rhetoric is deployed with little understanding of the variety of principles and practices enacted in dialogic communication. How can dialogue be conceptualized and distinguished from other forms of communication? On what assumptions is it based? How is communication understood? What does it take to facilitate it? What kinds of processes make it possible? What ideas about democracy underpin it? What kind of changes in academic and policy-making cultures does it call for?

This booklet seeks to speak to people involved in creating public forums for meaningful conversations. In particular, I have taken as imaginary readers those practitioners and students that I have had the fortune to work with. If, with pragmatist and deliberative thinkers, we agree that communication is the very fabric of democratic life, then analysing and improving the quality of communication in the public sphere becomes critical. Understanding dialogic communication helps us to interrogate our public engagement work, the role our research institutions should play in society, and the ways in which we can develop collective capacity to deal with complex problems.

This sandpit session at the Engaging Scotland 2011 Conference explored the challenges of connecting research, policy and practice, and signposted key networks in Scotland.

Firstly, Oliver Escobar (PPN) introduced some current knowledge & policy platforms. This was followed by an on-stage interview with Dr Elisabeth Innes (Moredun Research Institute) and Graeme Cook (Scottish Parliament Information Centre), who shared their experiences as practitioners in the field.

The session aimed to contribute to ongoing practice-led conversations about the work of creating interfaces between research and policy in Scotland.

This session of the Engaging Scotland 2011 Conference will map key networks in Scotland and explore the challenges of connecting research, policy and practice.
Firstly, Oliver Escobar (Public Policy Network) will briefly introduce some current knowledge & policy platforms. This will be followed up by an on-stage interview with Dr Elisabeth Innes (Principal Scientist and Director of Communications, Moredun Research Institute) and Graeme Cook (Principal Researcher, Scottish Parliament Information Centre), who will share their experiences as practitioners in the field. Finally, the conversation will be open to the audience, before concluding with an invitation to propose ideas for spin-off activities from this session.
All in all, the encounter aims to initiate a practice-led dialogue about the work of creating interfaces between research and policy in Scotland.

Engaging Scotland Conference 2011

20^th September, 9-5pm, Our Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh

Full programme HERE

Contacted by Mark Hewitt, director of Dementia Diaries, members of PPN’s Mental Health Working Group linked with University of Edinburgh (e.g. Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology) and other partners (including the local Polish community) to promote knowledge exchange in the two Dementia Diaries events in Edinburgh.

This short video gives a flavour of this unique theatre piece, which served as a stimulus for a follow up discussion on dementia.

The last conversation in this series takes us abroad as we look at international experience in citizen participation and community engagement.

To get the conversation started we have, as usual, a mixed panel:

• Betsy Super, American researcher based at the University of Edinburgh; specialist in political participation in the USA.
• Koen Bartels, Dutch researcher based at the University of Glasgow; investigates practices of participation in Amsterdam, Bologna and Glasgow.
• Veronica Campanile, a Scottish practitioner with experience in the UK and abroad -specially in South America-, and currently a Community Planning Officer at East Lothian Council.

REGISTRATION: Attendance is free but please sign up by email to Nicola Bryce at ppn@ed.ac.uk. The venue is accessible. All welcome.

Thursday 2nd June 2011, 5-6.30 pm, with drinks and nibbles after
6th Floor, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15A George Square
School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh

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Find out more about the CITIZEN PARTICIPATION GROUP at PPN.

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WHAT IS NEXT FOR THE GROUP?

This encounter closes the first series organised by the Citizen Participation Group at PPN, I hope you can make it.
You are also invited to join us again in September for the interim meeting (further details soon). All your ideas will be critical to shape our winter agenda.
As a concluding thought, and after the Arab spring and the Spanish assemblies movement, Margaret Mead’s words come to mind:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”

Venue: 6th Floor, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15A George Square, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. Map: http://www.ed.ac.uk/maps

The series organised by the Citizen Participation Group of the Public Policy Network continues. In this session we discuss issues around legitimacy and accountability in participatory processes. How legitimate is to involve citizens directly in shaping the policies of institutions and organisations? Who is accountable for such processes? To get the conversation started we have a mixed panel including a local policy maker, a practitioner, and an academic:

• Councillor Barry Turner (East Lothian Council)
• Nicola Cotter (Voices Scotland Lead for Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland)
• Stephen Elstub (University of the West of Scotland)

REGISTRATION: Attendance is free but please sign up by email to Nicola Bryce at ppn@ed.ac.uk. The venue is accessible. All welcome.

REDEFINING MODERN POLITICS: THE STATE AND BEYOND

A showcase by students of the Graduate School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh

DATE: Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 9:45am-5pm, wine reception after

VENUE: Informatics Atrium, Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. MAP

ATTENDANCE is open and free, but please register by sending your name and affiliation to Nonna at N.Gorilovskaya@sms.ed.ac.uk

PROGRAMME

Panel One: Challenges to the Modern State

Panel Two: The Networked Nature of Decision Making: Policy and Practice

Panel Three: Empowering the Citizen, Improving Democracy: Decentralisation and Participation in Mature and Developing European Democracies

There will be papers for all tastes. We hope you can join us!

Check our full programme HERE.

Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/hcw4zN.

Almost by definition, empirical research in the social sciences demands that you engage with wider publics. In addition, social scientists often want to engage in conversations with specific stakeholder or other social groups in order to explore how their findings may be useful in policy or practice, to gain inputs to shaping future research directions, and so on. ‘Dialogue’ offers a powerful approach to communication in all sorts of collaborative interactions including public engagement.

The training approach will give you hands-on experience of practical techniques plus orientation and reflection on dialogic approaches to public engagement.

When and where?

• Sessions 1&2: Monday 9 May at David Hume Conference Room, George Square, Edinburgh (UK)
• Sessions 3&4: Thursday 12 May 2011 at Heriot-Watt Post-Graduate Centre, 2.01, Edinburgh (UK)

Both days: 9:30 to 17:00

Cost: Free

More information and bookings:
http://dialogueforsocialscience-eorg.eventbrite.com/

There is also a version of this course designed for engineers:
http://dialogueforengineers-eorg.eventbrite.com/

The course has been developed and will be delivered by Wendy Faulkner, in collaboration with Heather Rea and Oliver Escobar.

Mainstream liberal narratives have often depicted politics as a matter of power and competing interests, disregarding emotions or conceiving them as threats to a rational and well-ordered society. In the last decades, however, this viewpoint has been increasingly challenged by a number of scholars researching on the complex and multidimensional role of emotions in politics.

This edited collection aims at providing a concise but comprehensive introduction to this area of research. The essays contained in this volume focus on a single case, the Obama phenomenon, illustrating empirically how the variable “emotions” can enrich political analysis. Taken together, the essays reflect the plurality of approaches available to the study of politics and emotions and thus contribute to the cutting-edge debates on this fascinating topic.

With contributions by Marcos Engelken-Jorge, Ramón Maiz, Brad Verhulst, Mary-Kate Lizotte, Andrew J.W. Civettini, Oliver Escobar, Alan Sandry, Åsa Wettergren, Deborah Gould

Engelken-Jorge, M.; Guel, P.I.; and Rio, C.M. (2011), Politics and Emotions: The Obama Phenomenon, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.

Check the table of contents HERE

For an author-formatted version of my chapter ‘Suspending disbelief: Obama and the role of emotions in political communication’, please get in touch by email to oliver.escobar@ed.ac.uk

Thursday 7th April 2011
5-6.30 pm, with drinks and nibbles after
6th Floor, Chrystal Macmillan Building,15A George Square, Edinburgh (UK)
School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh
MAP

The Citizen Participation Group at PPN invites you to the first of a series of critical conversations about citizen participation and community engagement. Our aim is to bring together practitioners, policy makers, academics and citizens in an open dialogue around the challenges of involving publics in decision-making.
This series has been conceived as to respond to questions that emerged during our first agenda-setting event in January. Some of the recurring questions were “What is the point?” and “Does it make any difference?” In response, this first event of the series is about PURPOSE and EFECTIVENESS.
The conversation will get started by a panel of speakers including:

Alasdair McKinlay (Community Engagement Team, Scottish Government)
Stephanie Plotnikoff (Involving Expertise and Glasgow Homeless Network)
Peter Mathews (School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University)

REGISTRATION: Attendance is free but please sign up by email to Nicola Bryce at ppn@ed.ac.uk.

The venue is accessible. All welcome.