About

Hello.

This blog has gone a bit quiet. When new posts appear they tend to be about democracy, digital participation or global governance.

I’m interested in democracy, governance, well-being and the effects of digital tech on these things.

I’ve written stuff about why I think digital technology gives us the tools with which to change governance the global level. And I’d like to return to that at some point – looking at something like an Open United Nations.

I’m trying to test this stuff at the national level in the UK at Democracy Club. We’re making democracy more user-friendly through crowdsourcing, open data and good digital service design. Come help us out.

Work history

Before throwing myself into Democracy Club, I used to work at Purpose, designing digital communication efforts to encourage large online collectives to be – or push for – the change.

Previously, I’ve helped: Giving What We Can to develop a communication strategy; trained UN staffers on social media (and drafted a social media strategy for the Secretariat); worked on communication strategy for a (lovingly-remembered) agency of the UK Government; and have done advocacy, comms and research for the Commonwealth Secretariat, Malaria No More, Absolute Return for Kids, Transparency International-Kenya, Global Witness, BBC World Service, an MP in the UK Parliament and Shelterbox.

Studiousness 

My first degree was in Jurisprudence from the rather lovely New College, Oxford and I have a Master of Laws, Governance and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and a MA Global Governance from the University of Waterloo, Ontario.

Other stuff

I once spent a year of Saturdays mentoring a lively seven-year-old from Brixton. It was scary and fun and you should do it too.