This week, we have a slightly different kind of episode to normal. Rather than discussing an academic publication, we’ll be looking at the ideas and career of Professor Marc Stears. 

Marc is currently the inaugural director of the UCL policy lab, set up to break down the barriers between academic researchers and broader society. His career to date has included stints in academia at Cambridge, Oxford and Macquaire, being the Chief Speechwriter of the Labour Party, writing major speeches for Ed Milliband, the CEO of the New Economics Foundation, and the Director of the Sydney Policy Lab.

Marc has some big ideas about politics and political reform. Two particularly attractive and compelling facets of Marc's work, found especially in two of his books, Out of the Ordinary and Demanding Democracy, are his optimism about the prospects for a better politics, and his vision of putting citizens at the heart of change and progress. His work offers us a faith in ordinary people, and in the possibility of a non-utopian kind of ordinary hope – and these are ideas that we discuss in this episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Prof Stears' Inaugural lecture.
• Out of the Ordinary How Everyday Life Inspired a Nation and How It Can Again. Marc Stears.
• Progressives, Pluralists and the Problem of the State. Ideologies of Reform in the United States and Britain, 1909-1926. Marc Stears.
• Demanding Democracy. Marc Stears.

UCL’s Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy offers a uniquely stimulating environment for the study of all fields of politics, including international relations, political theory, human rights, public policy-making and administration. The Department is recognised for its world-class research and policy impact, ranking among the top departments in the UK on both the 2021 Research Excellence Framework and the latest Guardian rankings.