Boaventura de Sousa Santos and James Tully, two distinguished scholars of democracy, in a transatlantic dialog discussing current challenges and opportunities in democracies around the world. The conversation focuses in particular on north/south relations, alternative traditions of democracy, and counter-hegemonic knowledges.

Around the globe, established democracies are in crisis. Authoritarian regimes are resurgent, populism is rising, and wealth inequality, ecological crisis, and popular disenfranchisement are undermining the very foundations of traditional, state-based democratic practice. At the same time, radically democratic movements are asserting themselves on streets and in the squares, in indigenous territories, and in new networks of counter-hegemonic actors around the world. These movements are challenging how we think about, practice, enact democracy at a fundamental level. In this context of global change, contestation, and uncertainty.

James Tully is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Law, Indigenous Governance and Philosophy at the University of Victoria, Canada. Prof. Tully is Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an Emeritus Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation, winner of the 2010 Killam Prize, and recipient of the David H. Turpin Gold Medal for Career Achievement in Research. Selected works include Public Philosophy in a New Key, Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context, and On Global Citizenship.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Boa is Director of the Centre for Social Studies, the head of ALICE: Leading Europe to a New Way of Sharing the World Experiences, winner of the Science and Technology Prize of Mexico, the Kalven Jr. Prize of the Law and Society Association, and the Adam Podgórecki Prize from the International Sociological Association. Selected works include Toward a New Legal Common Sense – Law, globalization, and emancipation, The Rise of the Global Left, and Epistemologies of the South.

This discussion is moderated by UVic PhD candidates Rebeca Macias Gimenez and Keith Cherry.

Hosted since 2005 at the University of Victoria, the EUCAnet.org project focuses on stimulating exchange on EU-Canada topics. With the support of the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet project of the European Union “Communication and Media Strategies for EU experts in Canada” and the Centre for Global Studies, the webinar series brought together experts in Canada with various stake holders (students, practitioners, media representatives) to engage with ideas on critical issues of politics and policy making in Canada and Europe.