Roslyn Fuller


Roslyn Fuller is a Canadian-Irish author, columnist and expert on historical and digital democracy. She is the author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed its Meaning and Lost its Purpose and In Defence of Democracy.

Education

Fuller attended North Lambton Secondary School in Forest, Ontario. After finishing high school, Fuller moved to Europe at the age of 19 where she learned German at Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, and subsequently studied Law with a focus on Public International Law and Legal Philosophy at Georg-August-University in Goettingen, Germany.
She then wrote her PhD at Trinity College in Dublin, graduating in 2010 as a Doctor in Philosophy, for her thesis on Democracy and International Law.

Academia

Fuller lectured in Law at Trinity College Dublin and the National University of Ireland, Maynooth during which she compiled the second edition of Biehler on International Law: An Irish Perspective, which continued the work of her thesis supervisor the late Gernot Biehler. She also authored several academic articles on issues ranging from Terrorism to Participatory Democracy and Whistleblowing.
Following the publication of Beasts and Gods, Fuller founded the Solonian Democracy Institute, which focuses on creating the conditions for direct, digital democracy. As director of the institute, Fuller is a regular speaker at events across the political spectrum, from the UK Battle of Ideas, to the Libertarian Movement, to universities around the world.
The Solonian Democracy Institute organizes conferences and educational events and publishes studies related to participatory and digital democracy.

Journalism

Fuller has written extensively for publications around the world, including the LA Review of Books, The Nation, Salon, the Toronto Star, the Financial Times, Alternet and Spiked. Between 2014 and 2016, she was a columnist for RT OpEdge where she ran a legal column called “The Fuller Picture”.
Her writing has focused on systemic analysis on the topics of politics, democracy, whistle-blowing and education.
Following an initial interview on Tonight with Vincent Brown on the Savita Halappanavar case in 2012, Fuller is now regularly asked to comment on matters of democracy, whistle-blowing, international law, and politics with appearances on BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, ABC Australia, The Keiser Report, Headstuff, Worlds Apart and Redacted Tonight.

Writing & Views

Earlier Works

Fuller wrote her first novel - ISAK - in 2005 while studying for the Bar Exam in Germany. The novel, which is set in the future, is an allegoric reflection of the issue of international terrorism, in particular questioning what precisely constitutes terrorism and which actions by governments or individuals can be subsumed under the term.
In 2007, parts of the novel were adapted as a stage play performed at the Irish Writers' Centre.
In 2008, Fuller co-founded the Irish Writers' Exchange, an organisation of both Irish authors and writers from around the world who have chosen to make Ireland their home away from home. The group contributes book reviews of current and classic fiction for Dublin-based multi-cultural newspaper Metro Éireann. Fuller and her book ISAK were mentioned in the 2009 edition of German travel guide Marco Polo for Dublin
In 2010 Fuller edited and contributed to Dublin: Ten Journeys, One Destination, a collection of short stories published by the Irish Writers' Exchange. In October 2011, the group won a special sponsors award at the MAMA Awards in Dublin.

Beasts and Gods: Ancient & Digital Democracy

In 2015 Zed Books published Fuller's academic research into democracy as a general trade book: Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed its Meaning and Lost its Purpose. The book is an analysis of the origins of democracy, its modern applications and the resulting loss of "people power". The book has received endorsements from Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole, who called it "a timely and provocative look behind the clichés of Western politics" as well as professor of law Marjorie Cohn and Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Forbes has called Beasts and Gods "a visionary thought experiment... guaranteed to make you think differently about the trillion dollar bureaucracies we call democracy today."
She was interviewed about the book on the Keiser Report, Artist Taxi Driver, This is Hell and The University Times.
In Beast and Gods, Fuller outlines the shortcomings of modern democracy and contrasts the design of modern western democratic systems with both the original democracy in ancient Athens and the Roman Republic, concluding that much of what we think of as democracy today, has in fact, deeply undemocratic, Roman Republican roots. Fuller traces the effects of this democratic deficit from national parliaments to international organisations such as the IMF, World Bank and the UN Security Council.
Fuller then applies the principles of Athenian democracy to modern systems in order to determine how we could use modern information technology to unlock the participatory potential of direct, digital democracy.

Debate with Andrew Sullivan

In May 2016 Andrew Sullivan published an article in New York Magazine called Democracies end when they are too democratic in which he argued that democracies needed elites to "protect this precious democracy from its own destabilizing excesses." Fuller debated Sullivan in a much-discussed polemic article Democracy — Too Much of a Good Thing?, which was called "an amusing exploration of the topic" by Matt Taibbi and even became the topic of a class assignment at Duke University.

In Defence of Democracy & Opposition to “Sortition-ism”

In 2019, Fuller followed up on Beasts and Gods with the publication of In Defence of Democracy, which has received endorsements from Democracy International and was positively reviewed by the Washington Post and the LA Review of Books.
In Defense of Democracy first debunks the theories of academics and writers across the political spectrum who believe that voters are either too stupid, too racist or too crazy for democracy. She argues that these ideas are based on questionable empirical research, and that democracy is not about “right” or “wrong” outcomes, but simply a method of mediating conflict.
Fuller also demonstrates that one of the commonly proposed political reforms – randomly selecting citizens into citizen assemblies or decision-making bodies – not only misconstrues the role sortition played in the ancient Athenian democracy but ultimately enhances elite control by limiting decisions to small, externally controllable groups. Fuller expanded on this theme in her 2019 article Don’t be fooled by Citizens' Assemblies, published on Unherd.
Finally, Fuller proposes a way forward, using direct, digital democracy to translate the will of the people into policy. Her approach involves five main principles:
  1. Mass participation in the form of online voting and deliberation
  2. Pay for Participation using a form of Universal Basic Income
  3. Tying deliberation to actionable outcomes
  4. Informal leadership based on the Athenian concept of rhetors
  5. Using sortition, but limited to appointing administrative tasks and positions
In an interview with Forbes, Fuller outlined some of the thought processes behind these principles:
  1. Technology for large-scale, direct democracy is less about elections and more about empowering policy debate and decision-making en masse
  2. Corrosive political media thrives because virtual conversations are untethered from policy consequences
  3. Reforming democracy with technology-scaled participation requires practical citizen education
  4. Mass engagement could rebuild fractured communities
  5. Transformation will depend on leaders with a vision for challenge and excellence
In 2020 In Defense of Democracy was selected as a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards

Education

Drawing on interviews with current and former adjunct lecturers, Fuller wrote a much-debated article on the exploitation of adjunct academics called Heartbreaking Stories from Academia: America’s Universities Treat Most Faculty Like Peons, and the Results Are Not Pretty. Originally published on Alternet in 2016, the article was subsequently re-printed by Salon and Truthdig.
Fuller also criticized the modern university education systems in an article in the Irish Independent in 2013.

Election Campaign

In 2016, Fuller ran as an Independent candidate in the 2016 Irish general election. She received 775 votes.
She ran on a platform of digital democracy. Following the election, Roslyn has implemented her election promise of direct people participation by conducting the first Digital Democracy experiment in Ireland, in which she asked people in her electoral area of Dublin Fingal to discuss and decide on a number of local and national policy priorities. She has stated that she intends to take action on the outcome of the initiative as part of her election promise.

Support for Whistle-blowers

In 2013 Fuller set up Wikilicious.net to raise money for organisations supporting whistle-blowers For the project she combined photos from her modelling career with information on whistle-blowers throughout recent history. The project has been widely covered in media around the world.
In 2020 she favourably reviewed Edward Snowden's Permanent Record for the LA Review of Books.

Modeling

Fuller worked as a model between 2005 and 2012, especially in the areas of fine art, glamour and nude art work. She has posed for some of Ireland's best-known photographers and artists. She has also worked abroad in Germany, the UK and Canada and has popularised Bodypainting in Ireland, having been chosen three times to
model at the World Bodypainting Festival in Austria for special effects artist Raquel Guirro. She is extremely short: only 4’10".
Articles about her have been published in Hotpress, the Sunday World, Irish News of the World, Irish Daily Star, Irish Daily Star on Sunday among others.
In 2009 she appeared on the TV show Ireland AM with bodypainter Nina Moore to publicise the World Bodypainting Festival
as well as enjoyed radio coverage on RTÉ's Mooney Show.
From 2012 to 2014 Fuller organised the annual Irish Bodypainting Competition, which has attracted media attention in Ireland, the UK and the US.