Field Experience and Consulting 

1) Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT)

During my PhD at Yale I was involved in different capacities in the design and implementation of field experiments in two Deliberative Polls and one America Speaks 21st Century Town Meeting. At Yale I also implemented my own first field experiment in a large intro class in comparative politics in 2006, and three different large email experiments investigating candidates accountability (2008, 2010, and 2012). In 2012 I implemented my first e-deliberation field experiment in collaboration with the Italian Democratic party and my first encouragement design in collaboration with the World Bank Institute in Cameroon. In 2017 I implemented an encouragement design to evaluate a Citizens' Assembly in the UK.

2) Fieldwork (participant observations, interviews & process-tracing)

I spent a total of 15 months in Brazil between 2007 and 2012. During this time period I conducted in depth case studies of cities implementing participatory budgeting including Porto Alegre (RS), Cruz Alta (RS), Hortolandia (SP), Itauna (MG), and Fortaleza (CE). Outside of Brazil I was involved as a designer, consultant or observer in democratic innovations in Reykjavík (Iceland), New York City, New Haven (CT), Concord (MA), in Vanvouver (CA), Southampton & Sheffield (UK), Milan (IT), Wuppertal (DE), Ricany (CZ), and Lisbon (PT).

3) Survey design and implementation

I started helping with surveys in Deliberative Polls in 2007 as an RA. During my fieldwork in Brazil I designed an implemented a survey of the members of the PB process in Porto Alegre. Then I contributed to the development of a telephonic survey to map the variety of democratic innovations (Brazilian PB Census 2012). I helped developing a large online survey to be embedded in the State level participatory system of Rio Grande do Sul in 2012. I contributed to the Development of the surveys used to evaluate the Participatory Budgeting process in New York City in 2011. I am involved in designing the pre-testing framework for the Participedia impact evaluation survey. I am part of the team that designed the impact evaluation toolkit for Participatory Budgeting in the USA. I have also designed a number smaller survey instruments in pre and post designs to evaluate the behavioral effect of deliberative experiments. In the Democracy Matters project I have developed a 4 waves survey designed to evaluate Citizens' Assemblies. In the EMPATIA project I am in charge of the survey based impact evaluation.

4) Consulting - research

In 2011 I started consulting pro bono for the participatory budgeting project in New York City and I contributed to the development of their initial impact evaluation framework. In 2014 I was invited to join their national research board and I co-developed their evaluation toolkit. In 2011 I also begun consulting for the World Bank Institute, joining the Digital Engagement Evaluation Team, that specializes in the implementation and evaluation of new technologies that can support citizens' engagement. In 2013 I joined the core development team of the Participedia Project. In 2014 I contributed to the design, evaluation and implementation of the Grandview-Woodland citizens' assembly in Vancouver. In 2015 I helped design the Empatia project that was successfully funded in 2016. I am now supporting Empatia in a variety of tasks, from organizing deliberative meetings with the partners, to impact evaluation and research.

5) Digital engagement

I designed and implemented my first digital engagement campaign in support of the 2012 experiment in collaboration of the Italian Democratic Party. In 2012 I managed the SMS based campaign to promote voting in Yaonde' participatory budgeting process in Cameroon. The campaign was also part of getting out to vote experiment. I am a member of the Participedia digital engagement team and I have helped manage the Participedia channels since 2013. In 2015 I helped the e-petition to call for a delay in the adoption of Da-rt, the new standard for data transparency and replication for political science journal. The e-petition was successful and lead to an e-deliberation, whose platform I contributed to shape. I designed and managed the Facebook e-deliberation component of the Citizens' Assemblies in Southampton and Sheffield in the UK. In 2016 I have helped with the engagement strategy of the first e-deliberation implemented by a section of APSA (see here). In 2017 I designed the low-cost hybrid engagement strategy of the Milan Participatory Budgeting that with just 5000 euros leveraging capillarization of small face to face meetings and Facebook ads generated more than 10.000 enrolled users.

6) Facilitation and management of face to face and online deliberative events

During my PhD at Yale I took part as a note-taker and staff in various Deliberative Polls. Then I volunteered as a facilitator in the Hill Neighborhood Forum. An assembly that was tasked to allocate a million dollar to projects in the poorest neighborhood of New Haven. In 2007 I trained for the first time facilitators for my experiment on the impact of biased facilitators on deliberation and that was the first time I managed a deliberative experiment by myself. In 2008 I co-managed the America Speaks discussion in New Haven on the US budget. In 2012 I prepared the online facilitators for the one month e-deliberation with the Italian Democratic Party. In Vancouver I helped facilitating the Grandview-Woodland 2015 Citizens' Assembly. In 2015 I formed the facilitators for the Citizens' Assembly in Southampton (UK) and co-managed the process. The CA pilot included two online closed facebook groups that I managed. In April 2016 I assisted the Qualitative Transparency Deliberation sponsored by the QMMR section of APSA. For QTD I optimized their platform and helped as an administrator of the forum. In 2017 I contributed to the design and implementation of EMPAVILLE a deliberative role playing game that leverages my experience as a facilitator.