Contributors

Gwendolyn Blue is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary. Her research interests include interpretive approaches to public engagement with environmental issues. She is currently working on a project that seeks to understand how corporate power influences dominant frames and public discussions about climate change. Ongoing work seeks to open public engagement with climate change to alternative perspectives, values, approaches, and world views.

Shelley Boulianne is an associate professor of sociology at MacEwan University. She completed her PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on media use and civic and political engagement, as well as survey research methodology. She has published in many journals, including Political Communication, New Media and Society, Information, Communication and Society, Social Science Computer Review, Field Methods, Canadian Review of Sociology, and the International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

Jacquie Dale, MM, MSc, CMC, is a public engagement specialist and partner at One World Inc., www.owi.ca. A multiple award winner for her work in deliberative dialogue, Jacquie is one of Canada’s foremost engagement practitioners, having designed and facilitated well over five hundred sessions over the last twenty years. Increasingly, she works with organizations to develop the skills, strategies, tools, and resources to implement and evaluate effective public and patient engagement practices in their own work. Her reflections and lessons learned on deliberative dialogue as a practitioner have appeared in several published articles. In 2016, she co-authored “Framing and Power in Public Deliberation with Climate Change: Critical Reflections on the Role of Deliberative Practitioners” which was published in the Journal of Public Deliberation.

Susanna Haas Lyons, MA, is a civic engagement specialist. She designs participation strategies, facilitates complex meetings, and provides training for better conversations between the public and decision makers. Bridging online and face-to-face methods, she has worked for over fifteen years on some of North America’s largest and most complex citizen and stakeholder engagement projects. Susanna teaches engagement skills for government, business, non-profits and at post-secondary institutions. Susanna is also a judge for IAP2 Canada’s annual Core Values Awards, which recognize excellence and innovation in public participation. susannahaaslyons.com

Lorelei L. Hanson is an associate professor of environmental studies at Athabasca University and a fellow with the Energy Futures Lab, a social learning lab focused on identifying innovation pathways to disrupt and transition Alberta’s energy system. Her research interests include energy transition, critical sustainability, food security, public dialogue on climate change, and environmental history, and her work can found in journals such as Environmental Politics, The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability.

David Kahane is a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, specializing in democratic theory and practice. From 2007 to 2010 he shepherded along the development of the project that became ABCD, and was ABCD’s Principal Investigator and Project Director from 2010 to 2016. His current research focuses on citizen deliberation and systems change, including in relation to the nascent discipline of “systemic design.”

Matt Leighninger is the Vice President for Public Engagement, and Director, of the Yankelovich Center, at Public Agenda. Public Agenda is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that helps diverse leaders and citizens navigate divisive, complex issues and work together to find solutions. Over the last twenty years, Matt has worked with public engagement efforts in over one hundred communities, in forty states and four Canadian provinces. Previously, Matt served as executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, an alliance of major organizations and leading scholars working in the field of deliberation and public participation. He has also assisted in the development of Participedia, the world’s largest online repository of information on public engagement and authored two books, The Next Form of Democracy, and, with Tina Nabatchi, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy.

Mary Pat MacKinnon, MPA, is a research practitioner, devoted to engaging citizens in public policy and program delivery. She writes and presents on the theory and practice of engagement and social change. Her career spans management positions, including as Vice-President, Hill + Knowlton Strategies; Partner, Ascentum, a digital and in-person engagement firm; Director, CPRN’s Public Involvement Network; and Director, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Canadian Co-operative Association. Volunteer contributions include: Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (2007–2015); Deliberative Democracy Consortium; Board Director, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting; jury member of the National Credit Union Award for Community Economic Development; and Chair, Low-Income Tax Relief Working Group, Ontario Fair Tax Commission.

John Parkins is a professor in the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology at the University of Alberta. His master’s degree in rural sociology and PhD in sociology are from the University of Alberta. He joined the university after ten years working as a social scientist with Natural Resources Canada. His research and teaching cover a range of topics, including social perspectives on renewable energy transition, social impact assessment, and the politics of resource management in Alberta. His recent research on public engagement is published in the journal Society and Natural Resources and Environmental Politics.

Tom Prugh is a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, co-directing five of the institute’s State of the World reports and editing World Watch magazine. In 2013, he served as an editor and contributing writer for the Secretariat of the New Development Paradigm of the Royal Government of Bhutan. Before joining Worldwatch in 2002, he spent nine years at the US Energy Information Administration as a writer and manager. Tom has published in many journals and periodicals and is lead author of two books, including The Local Politics of Global Sustainability (with Robert Costanza and Herman Daly).

Geoff Salomons is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. He also holds an MA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia. His research is broadly focused on the challenges of democratic governance of the environment and natural resources. His dissertation concerns the intergenerational issues surrounding non-renewable resource governance in Alberta. His master’s thesis, analyzing the consequences of restricted public participation in Canadian environmental assessments, was published in the Environmental Impact Assessment Review.