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Keynote
Keynote
Jane Mansbridge is the Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University. Professor Mansbridge is the author of Beyond Adversary Democracy, an empirical and normative study of face-to-face democracy in the New England Town Meeting. She is an expert on democracy, political representation, deliberation, and feminist theory and was President of the American Political Science Association in 2012-13.
Case Studies
Case Studies
Mark DiSalvo is President of the Massachusetts Moderators Association and the fourteen-year moderator of North Andover Massachusetts. He lectures at The Johnson School of Business at Cornell University, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the Institutional Limited Partners Association at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, creating and leading case studies in management of troubled entities. Mark has founded and leads various private equity fund management firms.
Past: Scholarship on Town Meeting History
Past: Scholarship on Town Meeting History
This panel includes scholars who draw from the fields of history, political science, indigenous studies, economics, and sociology. As well as public historians from Revolution250 and practitioners who draw on history in their work.
Jonathan Lane; is the Executive Director of Revolution 250 which is a consortium of organizations working together to commemorate the 250th anniversaries of the events that led to American Revolution. Lane has also served as a Director within numerous other historic organizations within Massachusetts.
Barry Levy; Professor Emeritus History, UMass Amherst. Author of Town Born: The Political Economy of New England from Its Founding to the Revolution. Levy is currently working on a sequel to his work on the political economy of New England towns, tentatively called "The Golden Coup: Shays Rebellion, Massachusetts’ Army of the Cincinnati, and the Triumph of Hierarchical Military Culture in the Formation of the United States, 1785-1789.”
Daniel Mandell, Professor Emeritus History, Truman State University. Most of his publications explore change and continuity in Native communities in 18th and 19th century southern New England, including a recent article on indigenous participation in Stockbridge town meetings. His most recent work, The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, centered on Revolutionary-era concerns about excessive wealth including extensive efforts by New England towns to regulate prices.
Michael Forbes Wilcox; served for twenty years as the Town Moderator in Alford, Massachusetts. He has also served for more than eight years on the Board of the Massachusetts Moderators Association. Michael has conducted a course on Town Meeting for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College, as well as many other courses on topics such as autism, local history, and indigenous culture .
Present: The State of Town Meeting
Present: The State of Town Meeting
This panel includes practitioners or scholars from New England states practicing town meeting. Practitioners include moderators, town managers/administrators, and community development/planning. Scholars draw from the fields of communication, public policy, public administration, and political science. Many scholars also write public-facing work.
Susan Clark (Vermont);a writer and educator who works with communities across the northeast on how to build inclusive, deliberative, and empowered public engagement. Clark is the co-author of Slow Democracy and, with Frank Bryan, co-author of All Those In Favor. She serves as Town Moderator of Middlesex Vermont.
Douglas Hall (New Hampshire); was the founding Executive Director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies. In this role, he led extensive analysis of town meeting in New Hampshire. Hall served as a state legislator representing Chichester NH and in that role participated in legislation regarding town meeting. He was also Town Moderator for Chichester for 17 years. He has served in a variety of nonprofit roles including Building Community in New Hampshire (refugee services) and the NH School Funding Fairness Project. The NH Center for Nonprofits awarded Hall its Board Impact Award for his exemplary nonprofit board service and overall leadership.
Erin O'Brien (Massachusetts); Professor of Political Science, UMass Boston. Co-author of The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism and More Than Blue, More Than Yankee: Complexity and Change in New England Politics.
Michael Morrell (Connecticut); Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut. Author of several works relating to deliberative and participatory democracy and empathy. Morrell also has also used his work to help town meetings.
Carmin C. Reiss; is the Immediate Past President of the Massachusetts Moderators Association and the Town Moderator of Concord Massachusetts. She is a principal of Resolutions LLC with a focus on mediating large, complex, multi-party controversies - having worked on the areas of product and professional liability, environmental, construction, and mass torts. Reiss recently retired as an Adjunct Professor at Suffolk University Law School, and is a co-author of The 21st Century Legal and Normative Structure of Massachusetts Town Meeting and an Editor of Town Meeting Time: A Handbook of Parliamentary Law, 4th Edition.
Laurie Smith (Maine); Town Manager, Town of Kennebunkport Maine and Former President of the Maine Municipal Association. Smith has served 6 different Maine communities over a 38 year career in local government.
Future: Contemporary Challenges
Future: Contemporary Challenges
This panel includes scholars who draw on the fields of legal studies, digitization, public administration, public policy, and political science.
Adam Chapdelaine, Massachusetts Municipal Association Executive Director and CEO, is an MMA past president who served for a decade as town manager in Arlington, MA. Chapdelaine lives in Dedham and serves as a representative Town Meeting member and on the Capital Expenditures Committee.
Ivria Fried; is the Immediate Past President of the Massachusetts Municipal Lawyers Association. Fried is also a partner at Harrington Heep LLP and specializes in environmental law, administrative law, and municipal governance, including the Open Meeting Law, the Public Records Law, and the Conflict of Interest Law.
Dawn Anderson; is the Moderator of Grafton, MA. Anderson also served as the Vice President of the Massachusetts Moderators Association. She is a content-driven marketing professional specializing in digital media and educational publishing.
Jane Fountain; Distinguished Professor and Director of University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Policy. Her current research is focused on artificial intelligence, digitalization, governance and institutional change and on cross-boundary management and governance. Fountain was the co-founder and director of the National Center for Digital Government and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Fountain was named to the list of the 100 Most Influential People in Digital Government by apolitical.
Jonathan Wharton; Associate Professor in Political Science and Urban Affairs and Chair of the Sociology Department at Southern Connecticut State University. Wharton is author of Democracy in New England: A Community Politics Reader. Wharton also serves on the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Democracy Center.
Organizing Committee
Organizing Committee
Sawyer Rogers is a PhD Student in Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the principal investigator for this event and grant. Rogers compares town meetings across New England to understand how different forms of these participatory deliberative governance institutions impact policy outcomes. Rogers works to produce knowledge that will inform communities about the participation, special interest, and budgetary impacts of retaining or modifying their town meetings through shifting to ballot, representative democracy, town/city council, or other forms.
Daniel Santos is a PhD Candidate in Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Daniel Santos is a PhD Candidate in Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research interest is in civic engagement, and he will be defending his dissertation, titled "Direct Democracy in the 21st Century: Massachusetts Open Town Meeting and Citizen Participation" this spring.
Rebecca Townsend, Ph.D., former professor of communication at University of Hartford and Manchester Community College. She has studied and written on Town Meeting deliberation. She is also a past president of the Massachusetts Moderators Association.
Funding Information
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.
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