openDemocracy and its partners brought activists, academics, and policy makers together in Barcelona late last July to discuss a way forward for refugee-related activism and city welcome policies. 

“We have seen a lengthy period during which politicians have deliberately disengaged from important aspects of what they should be doing, leading to a lot of disillusionment with politics.”

“Recognising the need to question our categorisation and how we pigeon-hole society doesn’t only have analytical power. It also provides us with a different way of looking at society.” An interview.

David Bernet’s profoundly European film, Democracy, is that rare thing, a documentary about the complex system that is democracy, and a triumphant democratic law-making process at that.

In this wide-ranging interview with human rights lawyer and former Privacy International head of advocacy Carly Nyst, we discuss surveillance politics, radical thinking, and human rights on the internet.

“If progressives focus too much on the institutional sphere, the right wing can take the streets – they’ve done it before. If we don’t, someone else will.” Interview with the author of Hope is a Promise. (5,800 words)

The Strasbourg Forum met soon after the Paris attacks, at a time of fear. Under such conditions, we ask in this week's feature: can our democracies resist the marginalisation of dissent?

Counter-radicalisation in France draws on British and Dutch policies developed in the mid-2000s. It extends police action to areas of diversity management such as education, religion and social policy. With what results? Interview.

A conversation about some of the factors behind the campus protests in the United States, and what they tell us more generally about our conditions of existence.

What (if any) is the 'right level' of surveillance? openDemocracy's editors introduce a new partnership with the World Forum for Democracy.

All the countries of those sitting around this table were born in genocide. In the case of Brazil, we were the world champion of slavery. So we are based on that! Sweet but violent. From the Squares and Beyond partnership.

On July 3-4, the LSE will jointly host a seminar with openDemocracy on the impact of the movements in the squares from 2011 onwards. Do they contribute to the democratic renewal of our democracies and if so how? A conversation.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s film Estate, a Reverie, is an unruly celebration of extraordinary everyday humanity. At the Open City Documentary Festival on 21 June 2015.

Here are fourteen reasons for the celebration of this work of genius, beginning with seven celebrating what Pride and Prejudice might be said to have gained from its own historical moment, before moving to the 'feel good factor' of our times. A Valentine's card, originally published on February 14, 2014.

How should Europe's media hold its leaders, its institutions, its decisions to account? Is it the fault of EU citizens that they don't? Is there a different role for old and new media? The oD Editor argues that new media might make the difference.

The motivation becomes artistic. You want to tell a story like a good storyteller and then you become political again and then you become artistic again. At least if you are hated, maybe, you are doing something right.  Interview with the filmmaker.

Three questions are important to us. First and foremost, who is the content or knowledge for? Which conversations is it already part of? How can the wider audience be built for that conversation most effectively?