First international conference of deliberating Universities Network unidelib

Universities Deliberating for a Livable Planet

International Conference
23rd May 2025
Institut d’Etudes Politiques Fontainebleau – UPEC
Amphitheatre

Programme

9h - Coffee and Posters
9h30 - General introduction by Émilie Frenkiel & Chloé Santoro (UPEC, France)

10h – Mark Warren (University of British Columbia, Canada) – When, where, and why might elected political elites reach for democratic innovations?

Morning session – “University Democracy”: institutional ecosystem, tools and governance issues when incorporating deliberative processes into the university

10h30 – Arnauld Leclerc (Nantes Université, France) – Why does democracy need to be reinvented in French universities?

10h50 – Filippo Bignami (SUPSI, Switzerland) – Enabling a conception of participatory digital citizenship: the ENSEMBLE program as democratic process experimentation at university

11h10 – Laurent Devisme (Nantes Université, France) – Experience a university community: lessons from Nantes' sustainable development assembly

11h30 – Discussion: Lisa Disch (University of Michigan) and Yves Sintomer (Université Paris 8)

12h15 Lunch 

First afternoon session – A School for Democracy? Involvement, effects and skills acquisition for participating students 

13h15 - Lucile Bouré (UPEC, France) - Deliberating in universities: connivances between the school form and the deliberative form, and how they shape deliberation amongst participants  

13h35 - Alice Bellicha (USPN, France), Emilie Frenkiel (UPEC, France) & Olivier Halevy (USN, France) - “I have learnt more than during courses": student citizens' assemblies and socio-ecological teachings 

13h55 - Emilie Frenkiel (UPEC, France) – Under what conditions can citizens’ assemblies empower students? 

14h15 - Discussion: Lise Hermann (University of Exeter, UK)

15h Coffee break

Second afternoon session – Sciences with and for society: the role of universities in supporting democratic processes of ecological transition and the status of expertise 

15h25 - Jón Ólafsson (University of Iceland) - Reimagining Ecological Restoration: Deliberating land use in the Icelandic highlands and ways  to stop soil erosion

15h40 - Selma Tilikete (Université Paris 8, France) - Distinguishing the political ecologies of climate assemblies: expertise as the nexus between climate data and political reform horizons

16h - Nelly Niwa (UNIL, Switzerland) - The transition assembly: a vector for accelerating sustainability at the University of Lausanne?

16h20 - Julie Mayer (Université de Rennes, France) - “Renouncing to Better Inhabit the Earth?” Deliberative Spaces for Constructing Renunciation: The Case of the University of Rennes Convention

16h40 - Discussion and final words: Graham Smith (University of Westminster, UK), Émilie Frenkiel (UPEC, France)

17h30 Closing of the conference