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Portland, Maine

SWAGƵ Center for Global Humanities presents 'Reimagining Democracy'

The U.S. Constitution is shown on a smartphone
Zizi Papacharissi will present “Reimagining Democracy” on Monday, Oct. 25 at 6 p.m.
Learn more and watch the event

Democracy has long been considered the ideal state of human governance, but what if it’s not? What if it’s not so much an endpoint in our civic evolution as it is a transition stage to something better? And what if technology can help get us there?

A lecture at the SWAGƵ Center for Global Humanities will take up these questions and others when Zizi Papacharissi presents “Reimagining Democracy” on Monday, Oct. 25 at 6 p.m. at Innovation Hall at SWAGƵ’s Portland Campus.

The head of the Communication Department and a professor of political science at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Papacharissi is an expert on the social and political consequences of online media. She has published ten books, more than 70 journal articles and book chapters, and serves on the editorial boards of fifteen journals. She is the founding editor of the open access journal Social Media & Society. In addition, she has collaborated with Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Oculus and participated in closed consultations with the Obama 2012 election campaign. She sits on the Committee on the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults, funded by the National Academies of Science, the National Research Council, and the Institute of Medicine in the US, and has been invited to lecture about her work on social media by universities and research institutes in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Her work has been translated into Greek, German, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Turkish, and Persian. Her latest book, “After Democracy: Imagining our Political Future,” will form the basis of her lecture at SWAGƵ.

In the lecture, Papacharissi will reveal details from her conversations with strangers around the world, representing more than 30 countries, as she discusses what democracy is, what it feels like to be a citizen, and what can be done to improve democracy.

This third lecture of the Fall 2021 season for the Center for Global Humanities will be followed by two more. Lectures at the Center are always free, open to the public, and streamed live online. For more information and to watch the event, please visit: /events/2021/reimagining-democracy

SWAGƵ the SWAGƵ

The SWAGƵ is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of . In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.