Ceri has worked across academia, civil society and social research for over 15 years on how to engage citizens and publics meaningfully in shaping community action, policy and research.

Establishing the Centre for Deliberation at NatCen, she has brought imagination about the forms, uses and impact of deliberation together with social science rigour to create informed public opinion to bear on big societal questions. So far this work has delivered projects exploring some of the most polarising issues of our time, created new conversations and networks in democratic innovation and plays a role in wider shifts in participatory policy making. She is also a recognised national leader in the ongoing development of deliberative methods.

Her earlier experiences included running the University of Brighton’s Community Knowledge Exchange for a decade; supporting partnerships between academics and community organisations, as well as roles in community development and social action.

She holds degrees in biology, natural resources and applied social science, and her doctorate on knowledge and power in participatory research identified conditions for epistemic justice in these contexts. She retains an ongoing interest in how working across different forms of knowledge can support social and policy outcomes.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, on the advisory board of the Citizens Convention on UK Democracy and is an associate editor of the journal Research For All.