Kent Law School’s Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris recently appeared on an episode of Figure It, a podcast which provides economic, political and social analysis on Cyprus.
On the podcast, Amanda and host Fiona Mullen discussed a workshop which they co-organised with the Cyprus Peace and Dialogue Centre (CPDC) in November 2024, in the UN-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia, Cyprus.
The workshop grew out of Amanda’s research into how ‘designerly ways’ (such as making ideas visible and tangible, and emphasising experimentation) can be used to nurture imagination in deliberative settings such as citizens’ assemblies. It was funded by a Socio-Legal Studies Association Impact Grant.
During the podcast Amanda and Fiona discussed how they used designerly ways to prompt and facilitated their civil society participants to engage in knowledge-sharing and experimentation with around the question: What if a citizens’ assembly were to design a future Cyprus peace process? A highlight of the workshop was a mini inter-species council, in which participants were asked to inhabit and then represent the perspective of a range of Cypriot flora and fauna.
You can find out more about Amanda’s work via her blog, Approaching Law and her video archive, and by listening to this episode of the Legal Design Podcast. Most of her academic publications are freely available via SSRN.