CSDD - Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity

The Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity (CSDD) at Queen’s University is an interdisciplinary Centre aimed at advancing research and teaching within the areas of democracy and diversity. The Centre seeks to bring the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, practitioners, methodologies and disciplines to bear on the unique strengths and challenges posed by diversity in democratic societies.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre focuses on diversity, broadly conceived, including diversity of lifestyle, philosophical diversity, racial diversity, gender diversity, diversity that is  brought by indigenous societies to settler-colonial societies, diversity caused by immigration, and diversity caused when a state comprises a number of different ethnic, religious or national communities.  It also focuses on democracy, asking questions about the appropriate political institutions and policies needed for governing diverse societies, and how such institutions and policies are to be evaluated normatively It further considers the special case of states that are undergoing significant transitions, from civil war to peace and from authoritarianism to democracy (or the reverse, as in the cases of ‘illiberal democracies’).