Professor Farrell’s current work is focused primarily on deliberative mini-publics. To date he has advised and/or researched six government-led deliberative mini-public processes in Ireland, the UK and Belgium. His most recent books include: The Oxford Handbook of Irish Politics (co-edited, Oxford University Press, 2021), and Deliberative Mini-Publics: Core Design Features (co-authored, Bristol University Press, 2021). In 2021 Professor Farrell was elected the Chair of the European Consortium for Political Research.

Based in Paris, Claudia Chwalisz leads the OECD’s work on innovative citizen participation, which explores how to bring public judgement to democracy to improve public decision making, and how to strengthen society’s democratic fitness. Claudia is the lead author of the first OECD report on deliberative democracy: Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave (2020; co-authored with Ieva Cesnulaityte), and she led the development of the OECD Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes. She co-ordinates the OECD Innovative Citizen Participation Network of leading international practitioners, academics, public servants, artists, and designers, and she edits the OECD's online digest Participo.

Marcin Gerwin, PhD is a specialist in deliberative democracy and sustainability, he is a coordinator of the Center for Climate Assemblies. A political science graduate, the topic of his doctoral dissertation focused on sustainable development in the context of global challenges. He designs and runs citizens' assemblies. A co-founder of Sopocka Inicjatywa Rozwojowa which led to organising the first participatory budgeting process on the city level in Poland. He is an author an author of “Citizens’ Assemblies: Guide to democracy that works”, as well as “Żywność i demokracja” (“Food and Democracy”) and “Żywność przyjazna dla klimatu” (“Climate-friendly Food”).

Marijn started her career in immigration and refugee organisations, from where she moved into international development which finally led her to climate and environmental politics and activism. She found that these issues are all intrinsically intertwined. In 2018 she joined a small group of activists in a newly founded movement called Extinction Rebellion (XR). Here she learned about citizens' assemblies and, together with members of the Sortition Foundation, created XR's Citizens' Assembly Working Group. Their aim is to educate the movement about citizens' assemblies and deliberative democracy, and to guide XR's messaging and actions on the Third Demand: a Citizens' Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice. Marijn is also the co-founder of the XR Podcast and host and producer for Rebel Radio.

I’ve been a climate activist for the past 9 years at The Climate Reality Project, where I am currently a mentor to new climate advocates entering the organization.  As a supporter of civic and youth engagement in the decision making process, I am locally engaged in the organizing team of the Local Conference of Youth on climate change in Italy, a forum event where young people can learn more about the climate crisis and elaborate solutions that will contribute to a final youth statement which is handed to the local institutions. Whereas at the global level, I am involved in the structuring of the COY, the UN conference of youth on climate change, where a final global youth statement is produced and brought to the Conference of the Parties every year. I joined this year’s theme for the World Forum for Democracy because I believe in the importance of civic engagement, where citizens can be part of the policy making process that concerns the society and the environment in which they live.