Jonathan Rose

I am Professor and Head of the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University, a job I consider, to quote Keith Richards, a "lucky accident."

There have been several formative events in my research. From April 2006 to June 2007 I was on leave from Queen's to serve as the Academic Director of Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, an experience that taught me a lot about the capacity of fellow citizens. It also lead to a new stream of research for me examining the effectiveness of citizens' assemblies as deliberative bodies. This work produced a book written with André Blais, R. Kenneth Carty, Patrick Fournier and Henk van der Kolk called When Citizens Decide: Lessons From Citizens Assemblies (London: Oxford, 2011), a book that won the Lipset Award for best book in Canadian politics from the American Political Science Association.

In 2021, a group of international colleagues and I published a book called Deliberative Mini-Publics: Core Design Features (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2021). This was our attempt to enumerate the elements of these sorts of bodies and how they might fit into the policy process.

Over my career, I have had many opportunities to make scholarly connections with governments and non-governmental organizations. I've been an expert witness for several House of Commons committees, the Auditor General of Canada, the Privy Council office and the Department of Justice for a Supreme Court of Canada case on electoral reform.

My citizen engagement work includes leading a panel for the Bank of Canada to choose the face on Canada's $10 bank note, helping develop Canada's policies around marine protected areas and several efforts at the municipal level. I created and led the Prince Edward County Citizens' Assembly, a body created to study the optimal size of municipal council. In September 2016, I partnered with my friend and collaborator, Peter MacLeod of MASSLBP to co-lead the Lethbridge Citizens' Assembly. Most recently, in 2024, I was the Academic Lead for the Yukon Citizens' Assembly. You can read more about that project in a recent Post.