Collective Effervescence - ReDefining a Democracy that Works with Isabella Roberts of ANTIPARTY

Apr 29, 2026

Isabella Roberts, researcher in deliberative democracy and founder of SAFE, explores citizens' assemblies and tech-enabled deliberation. She talks about facilitation, consensus decision-making, immersive virtual tools to restore embodiment, layering local to national processes, handling misinformation, and using digital platforms and AI to expand participation.

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INSIGHT

Citizens Assemblies Replace Party Politics

Citizens assemblies replace party politics by selecting ordinary citizens by sortition to deliberate on policy instead of voting for party-aligned politicians.
Isabella Roberts explains SAFE and how representative civic lotteries produce empathetic, consensus-driven decisions across diverse lived experiences.

ADVICE

Design Assemblies With Professional Facilitation

Design assemblies as facilitated, time-bound deliberations with trained facilitators, expert witnesses, and independent evaluation to prevent undue influence.
Isabella stresses facilitator selection, representative recruitment, compensation, and independent evaluation as nuts-and-bolts requirements.

ANECDOTE

Irish Assembly Story Shows Minds Can Change

An Irish assembly member shifted from anti-gay views after meeting a gay man face-to-face during deliberation, showing empathy can change entrenched positions.
Isabella recounts this case as evidence that personal storytelling in assemblies prompts real-time perspective change.

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Can we separate politics from democracy? Our political system is wholly corrupt and no longer fit for purpose - if it ever was. What if Citizens' Assemblies could bring agency to the whole of our population, helping people to find empathy with each other, to engage in conversations in good faith and work together to solve the wicked problems of the polycrisis: social inequity, climate chaos, the death cult of predatory capitalism. These are so interlinked, we won't fix one unless we fix them all.

So how do we do it? This week, I'm talking to someone who spends her life reflecting on, teaching and researching this. Isabella Roberts started off in the Big Four, Private Equity and Investment Banking, then switched from the private markets into politics at the start of 2021 as a candidate for the London Assembly elections. Against the backdrop of the UK's first year out of the EU and in the depths of the COVID pandemic, she was inspired to take a stand and be the change she wanted to see in the governance of the UK's capital.

She then took on a Masters in Digital Politics and Sustainable Development. Her thesis in 2023 focused on How Collective Intelligence Can Enhance Democracy, which resulted in the initiation of SAAFE which stands for: Space for Silent Contemplation and Reflection, Active Listening and Feeling Heard, Ability to Change One's Mind, Feeling Connected as Part of the Whole, Epistemic Growth and Epistemic Humility - and which uses human-centred design principles for empowering participants in tech-enabled deliberation. This is an inquiry into what it means to be human in a digital age, in line with systems change towards a more deliberative democracy, and it has manifested in a multi-stakeholder project supported by the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton, bringing together democratic practitioners and the developers of deliberative technologies. Meanwhile, Bella is the independent evaluator of two deliberative processes: the Birmingham Museums Trust Citizens' Jury, and currently the National Gallery's Citizens' Assembly (NG Citizens).
She also completed her first Vipassana course of 10-day silent meditation and is studying for a PhD with the title: Revolutionising deliberative democracy with immersive technology - a comparison between East and West.

Bella has explored the depth and breadth of what works, so that together, we can create a democracy that empowers ordinary people to help fix their communities and the wider world. Like previous podcast guests, Matt Golding of Antidote and Dylan McGarry of Empatheatre, Bella understands the sense of meaning and purpose and involvement that is so transformative - which was why this conversation was so rich and so deep. Enjoy!

Links
Bella on LinkedIn
Antiparty
Delibtech
Breathe With Bella Substack
Bella on YouTube
Bella on Spotify
@Antiparty on YouTube
ANTIPARTY on Spotify

POLIS

Books
Against Elections
Politics without Politicians by Helen Landemore
Bella's Masters Dissertation - How Can Collective Intelligence Enhance Democracy? An Investigation Towards Human Centred Design Principles For Empowering People Engaging With Deliberative Technologies?

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