Professor Catherine Marshall is appointed as ideaXme board advisor. Catherine joins other notable advisors including former NASA astronaut, Nicole Stott, Dr Robert Brown, FAPS, FIEE, FInstP, MAE, who was CEO of The American Institute of Physics and is now Professor UCI Beckman Laser Institute and Clinic and Sir John Hegarty, co-founder of BBH (Bartle Bogle Hegarty) and the Garage Soho.
Professor Marshall comments:
The Mission of ideaXme is to “Move the human story forward” and I am delighted to join the board to help do so. I created the MA Political Ideas in a Digital Age in 2019 in the same spirit, because I wanted to shape a new generation of future leaders, ethically aware of their role in a changing digital world in which the traditional way of doing politics was being challenged. I also wanted to get an international team of students, all using English, willing to learn from one another, mixing and joining from all over the world to change it for the better. It may have been an impossible dream but it was/is also grounded on the belief that you can only change the future if you understand your past, how it came to be, how ideas emerge in a context and how the human story shapes the legacy of these ideas. Politics is the best possible debating opportunity of sorting out complex societal questions in a peaceful way. Therefore, learning the rules of debate in a spirit of respect, the context in which political ideas have emerged and the ways that they are today transformed by the digital age, is what I do and what IdeaXme does on an even larger scale.
“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself than by the true opinions of those who only hold them, because they do not suffer themselves to think”, John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
Andrea Macdonald, ideaXme’s founder comments:
This appointment marks one of the most important appointments to our advisory board so far and promises to extend both ideaXme’s audience, intellectual framework and our ability to impact the world in the most positive way.
Catherine Marshall is Professor of British Studies at CY Cergy Paris Université, France, and Director of the MA Political Ideas in a Digital Age.
Her research centres on British intellectual and political history during the Victorian period. She notably explored the ideas and influence of the journalist and constitutionalist Walter Bagehot (1826-1877); was involved in the discovery and publication of the papers of the Metaphysical Society (1869-1881); and explored the evolution and importance of political “deference” in the British constitution during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She also works on the legacy of some of those ideas on twentieth and twenty-first century Britain. She teaches British history and the history of political ideas.
She is the author and co-editor of several articles, collected works and journals, most notably with Bernard Lightman and Richard England, of a 3-volume critical edition of The papers of The Metaphysical Society (1869-1880) with Oxford University Press (2015) and The Metaphysical Society. Intellectual Life in Mid-Victorian England, again with Oxford University Press (2019). She also just co-edited an issue of the Revue Française d’Histoire des Idées Politiques (2021) on the education of Princes and, along with Alan S. Kahan, an issue of The Tocqueville Review on “The Effects of Capitalism on People, Personality and Culture” (2020). Her latest book is a monograph entitled Political Deference in a Democratic Age. British Politics and the Constitution from the Eighteenth Century to Brexit with Palgrave (2021).
Political Ideas In A Digital Age Programme Details
This new MA program is the result of the lead academics’ belief that the digital age is radically transforming the ways in which politics is and will be done in the future. Political behaviour, from the ways in which political ideas are expressed, to campaigning, voting, and to the ways in which political protest rises, are the new challenges ahead for Western democratic states. The problem, as they see it, is to adapt society’s outdated institutions to a perpetually evolving digital democratic age.
The team, led by Professor Marshall, is “built on friendship, interdisciplinary expertise, and the desire to study and propose new forms of mediation in the area of politics, based on new information and communication technologies, has created this MA program for a young generation of students who will be able to assess and harness the political, social and cultural impact of the digital age”.
They hope that through a research seminar in which the students will be fully integrated, an interaction will emerge with international students and international fellows. Mostly, though, we intend this MA to be inspiring and unique.
Opportunities Created By MA Political Ideas in a Digital Age
The MA Political Ideas in a Digital Age (PIDA) gives students the opportunity to study the ways in which political ideas have been transformed by scientific progress since the 17th, up to the digital age in the 21st century.
The MA is the creation of Professor Marshall, CY Cergy Paris University and the UNESCO chair on Digital Innovation in Trans- mission and Publishing which specialises in the field of new media and digital humanities. It draws upon the diverse interests of a mix of seasoned practitioners and top-notch academics whose research ranges from the history of political ideas, digital humanities, political economy, digital law, data management algorithms and techniques, automated surveillance by states of their citizens, digital profiling via data mining, micro-targeting of political advertising, up to publishing studies. It is an interdisciplinary course which bridges subject boundaries, uses both analytical and institutional approaches and refers to the Anglo-American and ‘continental’ traditions.
As a graduate of this programme, students cover both historical traditions and immediate contemporary developments, giving them broad knowledge of the history of political ideas in a digital age and the changing perceptions of democracy, the common good and ethics. They develop social data science methodologies to understand the ways in which political ideas can be transformed through technology. Moreover, they also have the opportunity to take part in a monthly research seminar on “Political Ideas in the Digital Age” in which Visiting Fellows, academics and business partners will present their work on the transformation of transmission modes in political life that is currently taking place as a result of new digital technologies.
For more information about this course please contact Professor Catherine Marshall via email: [email protected]
Connect with Catherine Marshall:
Instagram Professor Marshall @catherinemarshallcyu
