The pace of political change in the United States and Europe has made it difficult to interpret the fire hose of news, or assess how these developments connect to our communities, workplaces, and research participants. This session helps you figure out what to pay attention to and gives you key frameworks for sensemaking based on rigorous qualitative research traditions. Leading experts share:

• A central framework for understanding the US regime that exists now
• The key metric of democratic resilience
• Specific indicators you may experience in workplaces, sociotechnical systems, civil society, and public service
• The extraordinary importance of collective action to ensure that authoritarianism does not take hold

Speakers

Lucan Way is a political scientist and Distinguished Professor of Democracy at the University of Toronto. His research in comparative politics focuses on the emergence and durability of democratic and authoritarian regimes. Way’s award-winning books include Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Steven Levitsky, Princeton University Press), Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics (Johns Hopkins University Press), and Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Steven Levitsky, Cambridge University Press).

Nichole Carelock is an anthropologist and researcher at United States Digital Service who leads AI policy implementation, human-centered design, and cross-agency digital transformation at the highest levels of the U.S. government. She has also worked in the private and nonprofit sectors, including senior positions at Meta, the Tech Talent Project, and Ad Hoc LLC. Nichole is also a past member of the EPIC Board of Directors and holds a PhD in anthropology from Rice University.

Marta Lorimer is a Lecturer in Politics in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University and co-editor of Political Research Exchange. Her research focuses on far right politics, particularly in France and Italy and with respect to EU integration. Lorimer is the author of Europe as Ideological Resource: European integration and Far-right Legitimation (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Flexible Europe: Differentiated integration, Fairness and Democracy (Bristol University Press, 2022, with Richard Bellamy and Sandra Kröger).