Oxford student awarded prestigious Trudeau Scholarship

Amanda, who will take up a place at the Oxford Internet Institute studying for a DPhil in Information, Communication & Social Sciences, is one of 15 doctoral students to be selected for the scholarship. She is also Oxford's tenth Trudeau Scholar. The scholarship will enable Amanda to look at online citizen political engagement and how policy decisions in Canada are shaped by input from e-consultations. Her longstanding interest in the relationship between citizens and the state led her to work with food security advocacy groups and social housing projects, and as a researcher looking at online citizen engagement strategies for Canada's Parliamentary Information and Research Service. Amanda's research is driven by her conviction that the internet can expand the influence of ordinary citizens in government decision-making but that more reform is still needed. She says: 'With my research, I hope to broaden our understanding of the institutional reforms required for online political participation to foster a legitimate partnership between citizens and the state. The need for such a partnership is especially apparent at a time when low voter turnout rates and dismal popular perceptions of politics point to a model of public decision-making that no longer sustains a healthy system of representative democracy.' - The Trudeau Scholarships are the largest doctoral scholarships in the social sciences and humanities in Canada, and provide scholars with $60,000 bursaries for up to four years.