Deliberation & Division: Making Change at The New England Town Meeting 

RSVP

Please RSVP to ensure we can accommodate and facilitate in-person and send you the link for virtual attendance. This event is free, open, and welcomes the public.

The Event

This event will have you build knowledge and skills to deliberate across division. You will also get to engage with renowned practitioners and scholars including those working in local government, politics, public policy, history, law, communication, theory, indigenous studies, planning, and business. 

In Celebration of the New England Town Meeting’s role in the American Revolution, its ongoing contemporary usage, and its innovative future we invite you to join practitioners and scholars in a symposium focused on town meeting’s past, present and future. Town meetings are utilized in New England in over 1,000 communities where governments trust citizens to propose, deliberate, and make decisions on all forms of legislation. They are truly a "laboratory of democracy,” with states and towns innovating new deliberation and decision-making methods and rules to address contemporary and future challenges. The town meeting further offers a unique opportunity to act as a bulwark against threats to democracy by continuing the New England tradition of nearly 400 years of self-governance. The event will be interactive between participants and panelists, feature a keynote by Jane Mansbridge the Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University, have Mark DiSalvo the President of the Massachusetts Moderators Association work you through case studies to learn how to deliberate across division, and feature several panels. This is a great opportunity to learn and further knowledge about local democracy and meet those working on these issues from across New England. 

The panels’ themes and questions include:

• Scholarship on Town Meeting History, particularly with regard to the American Revolution. The central question will be: how has town meeting acted as a bulwark or a threat to democracy in the past, and how might those lessons apply to democracy today?

• The state of Town Meeting Today, with a focus on how it uses participation and deliberation to govern. The central question will be: How does the town meeting operate today? What lessons from the town meeting can apply to democracy elsewhere?

• Contemporary challenges, technical and social innovations, and potential legislation. The central question will be: What are the challenges with town meeting? What have communities tried to improve the town meeting? What has been successful, what has not been successful, and how can this apply to democracy elsewhere?

For more information please view our list of practitioner and academic participants from across various fields and our schedule for the day.

The event will occur:

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

9:00 am - 4:30 pm

Great Hall, Old Chapel, University of Massachusetts Amherst (Travel Information Here)

Why Attend?

This event will bring together practitioners and scholars from across the world to discuss the New England Town Meeting and local democracy. Participants will leave with an understanding of how town meeting works across New England, build the skills to engage with divisive local decision-making to change your local community, and have opportunities to network with practitioners and academics working on state and local government and participatory processes from across New England and the world. We encourage undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and the wider public to attend as there will be something to gain for all of these groups. 

We further designed the panels with a focus on open discussion through having invited panelists start and then opening the panels up to participants to contribute.

Funding Information

Sawyer Rogers, a PhD Student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the Principal Investigator of this grant. This event is hosted by the Political Science Department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Funding is provided by the Chancellor’s Community, Democracy, and Dialogue (CDD) working group. The CDD has been created to promote dialogue, academic inquiry, and respect for difference in addressing challenging topics. These are forms of engagement central to higher education and a thriving democracy.