The Deliberating Universities Network (UNIDELIB) brings together academic institutions from around the world that aim to promote and introduce deliberative experimentations in universities.

Launched in November 2023, during the “Deliberation in action” conference organized by the Paris-Est Créteil University (UPEC) in France, the Deliberating Universities Network engages an ever-growing number of universities in France and around the world.

The network members believe that universities have a key role to play in forging a path to more sustainable democracy and to address climate change issues, beginning by transforming their own institution. Drawing from the French experience of the Climate change citizens' assembly, the network members promote and introduce, in their own university, deliberative processes in the form of student and academic staff citizens assemblies. These assemblies offer an innovative framework for student engagement and collective decision-making for all university actors, to address the ecological, social and democratic challenges in universities transformation process.

Documentary Deliberating Universities, directed and produced by Yves Lechermeier, 2024

• Sharing resources and mutual assistance in the development and implementation of deliberative processes by member universities: the network is a platform for mutual assistance and learning. The network lists, documents and makes accessible all the data produced through the deliberative processes implemented by its members, in order to create shared resources to facilitate the implementation and the study of university deliberative processes by all its members. The network allows member universities to access tools as well as human and financial resources.

• Collaborative and interdisciplinary research: the UNIDELIB network provides access to a plurality of field researches for researchers from member universities. It offers them the opportunity to conduct comparative fieldwork to produce interdisciplinary academic work that contributes to the research on deliberative democracy, university transformations, and on the social and political issues linked to the environmental crisis.

• A joint reflection on current issues and new models of governance at the university: in the face of environmental, democratic and societal challenges, the network promotes critical thinking on existing educational and decision-making systems. It promotes horizontality, interdisciplinary collaboration and the inclusion of student voices and, more broadly, of all stakeholders in the governance of the university.

• An international dimension that contributes to the expansion of the network and the large diffusion its activities: the network welcomes French and foreign universities. It aims to further expand internationally by promoting university deliberative innovations legitimacy on an international scale, in particular through the sharing of its initiatives and results with other academic institutions and organizations.

• Publication: to access the list of the network's publications, please click here.

• Agenda:
  • November 22, 2024: workshop bringing four Parisian universities that are holding student citizens' assemblies for 2024-2025 (Paris Dauphine - PSL, Sorbonne Paris Nord, Sorbonne Nouvelle and UPEC), in order to reflect on the orders of magnitude of the environmental impact. This workshop will also be an opportunity to discuss with Graham Smith, professor of political science at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster (United Kingdom).
  • February 10, 2025: workshop to collectively work on a university and student citizens'assemblies organization guide.
  • May 23, 2025: the UNIDELIB international conference will be held at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Fontainebleau (UPEC), in France.
  • May 24, 2025: UNIDELIB workshop.
  • To access previous events, please click here.

To contact us, please write to emilie.frenkiel@u-pec.fr.