Professor Carolyn Hendriks

She is an international scholar of contemporary democratic governance, and has published widely on citizen participation, community engagement, public deliberation, representation and listening.

Over the past 20 years Carolyn has led numerous interpretive research projects in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands on how citizens, activists and elites experience participatory, deliberative and networked modes of governing. She has also undertaken research on how politicians engage with citizens, for example through their executive roles, legislative committees and constituency service.

Carolyn’s more recent research considers how citizens themselves are seeking to transform dysfunctional democratic and governance institutions. As part of this work she is empirically investigating the community-led democratic mending occurring across Australia electorates that has given rise to community-based independents.

Carolyn has authored more than 30 journal articles, a number of which have won international prizes. She is also the author of three books, including Mending Democracy: democratic repair in disconnected times (with Ercan & Boswell, Oxford University Press, 2020), The Politics of Public Deliberation (Palgrave, 2011), Environmental Decision Making: exploring complexity and context (with Harding & Faruqi, Federation Press 2009).

Her current projects include citizen-led governance, which examines a little known pathway for deepening citizen engagement in the democratic process that manifests in citizens’ practical policy work, and Transforming Democracy in the Bush: A Study of Politics in Rural Australia.