Podcast appearances and mentions of benjamin isakhan

What can Syria's religious minorities expect post the Assad regime? Standing Together, a collaborative project between Palestinians and Jews offers a vision of peace and equality for people in the region. And how non-Europeans have become the backbone of the Church in Australia.

Welcome to episode 18 in Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. This episode is part 4 of the series where my guests share their views in response to the question: If you could change one thing about our system of democracy what would it be? And it is also the last episode in Season 2 about representative democracy. I’ll be taking a break to put together Season 3 looking at Elections, voting and alternatives.   First up let’s hear from Professor Nadia Urbinati’s response to this question. Nadia is is a Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies at Columbia University. She is a political theorist who specialises in modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions. I spoke with Nadia about the development of representative democracy in episode 2 of Season 2.   Next is Dr Simon Longstaff is the Executive Director of the Ethics Centre here in Sydney Australia. Simon was my guest in episode 17 of Season 2 talking about the relationship between democracy and ethics.   Lewis Adams who was a juror on the Infrastructure Victoria Citizens’ Jury in 2015 and a guest on Episode 17 in Season 1.   Nancy Thomas is the Director of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education in the Jonathan M Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts College. My interview with Nancy will be published in a later season of the podcast.    Helene Landemore is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Her research interests encompass democratic theory, theories of justice, Enlightenment thinkers, and the philosophy of social sciences.   Jean-Paul Gagnon from the University of Canberra. Jean-Paul is a philosopher of democracy specialising in democratic theory. I spoke with Jean-Paul in Episode 6 in Season 2 about his work identifying the many adjectives associated with democracy.   Harm van Dijk is one of the founders of the G1000 in the Netherlands. I spoke with Harm in Episode 15 in Season 1 about the design of the G1000 there.   The next person to answer the question is Professor James Fishkin who holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy. I spoke with Professor Fishkin about deliberative polling in episode 16 in Season 1.   Andy Holdup who was a member of the Citizens’ Assembly South in Southhampton in the UK in 2015 and also a guest on episode 17 in Season 1.   And finally, we hear from Benjamin Isakhan who is Associate Professor of Politics and Policy Studies and Founding Director of POLIS, a research network for Politics and International Relations in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University, Australia. I spoke with Ben in episode 4 of Season 2 about non-Western democracy.    Thank you for joining me for Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast, looking at how representative democracy developed and how it operates. I’ll be back with Season 3 on Elections, voting and alternatives in September 2017. If you haven’t yet subscribed to the podcast, I’d suggest you do that now so that when Season 3 starts you’ll automatically have those episodes downloaded onto your podcast app. 

Welcome to episode 4 of Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! A podcast. Today’s episode is about non-Western democracy. I’d like to thank David Schecter for bringing this area of democratic thinking and practice to my attention and for introducing me to my two guests: Associate Professor Benjamin Isakhan and PhD scholar Zelalem Sirna from Ethiopia. Both guests highlight the Eurocentric nature of much of the discourse on democracy and introduce us to some non-western examples of democratic practice.   Benjamin Isakhan is Associate Professor of Politics and Policy Studies and Founding Director of POLIS, a research network for Politics and International Relations in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University, Australia. He is also Adjunct Senior Research Associate, in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa and an Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network at the University of Sydney, Australia. Ben is the author of Democracy in Iraq: History, Politics, Discourse (Routledge, 2012 HB, 2016 PB) and the editor of 6 books  including The Secret History of Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 HB, 2012 PB – translated into Japanese 2012, and Arabic 2014), and The Edinburgh Companion to the History of Democracy: From Pre-History to Future Possibilities (Edinburgh University Press & Oxford University Press, 2012 HB, 2015 PB). He is a leading expert and regular commentator on Middle Eastern Politics, Democracy and Democratization across the Middle East, and Heritage Destruction in the Middle East.    Zelalem Sirna is a PhD scholar at the University of Coimbra in Portugal in the programme of Democracy in 21sy Century.  He earned his LL.B degree in law from the Haramaya University Ethiopia and his MPhil in Indigenous Studies from University of Tromso, Norway.  For his Masters, he undertook a comparative study of Gadaa, the traditional system of governance in Ethiopia and liberal democracy. For his Ph, he is looking at deliberative democracy, deliberative systems and the Gadaa system. As a sociology-legal researcher, is main works are focused on normative pluralism and the challenges it poses in 21st century.    The next episode will consider what my guests think is the one change they would like to see in our system of democracy. I ask all of my guests the same two questions: what for you is the essence of a real democracy and if you could change one thing about our current system of democracy what would it be. I’d love to hear your answers to these two questions and include your perspectives in future episodes. You can send your perspectives to me by email to essence@realdemocracynow.com.au or via Twitter or Facebook. 

Dr Benjamin Isakhan, from Deakin's Centre of Citizenship and Globalisation delivers a public lecture on Measuring the Destruction of Heritage and Spikes of Violence in Iraq’ and seeks to investigate the complex inter-relationship that exists between the destruction of cultural heritage and sharp upsurges in terror and violence.

Dr Benjamin Isakhan, Research Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences has been awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award for his project that Measures the Destruction of Heritage and Spikes of Violence in Iraq.

Socio-Political Implications for the Middle East and Beyond. Dr Benjamin Isakhan, a researcher at the Centre for Comparative Social Research, and a member of the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin discusses an upcoming conference providing an insight into Arab Revolutions and the impact for future world relations.