Ekaterina Lukianova is the Associate Director of the Parrhesia Program and Assistant Senior Instructional Professor of Public Discourse. She studies public dialogue and deliberation, develops educational programs, and facilitates community conversations that build civic capacity. Ekaterina’s research has been motivated by two broad questions: “How can we engage across difference in a constructive way?” and “What role does everyday civic dialogue play in sustaining democratic politics?” Her studies have appeared in the Journal of Language and Politics, Journal of Argumentation in Context and Journal of Social Epistemology. At Parrhesia, Ekaterina is responsible for the academic curriculum, rooted in the Chicago Principles of Freedom of Expression. Her courses are designed as learning experiences where students study theoretical concepts of democratic public life and its challenges, test these concepts by analyzing public communications and practicing essential skills of civic discourse, and develop agency through reflection on their practice.
Before coming to the University of Chicago, Ekaterina was a program officer at the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio. There, she co-led the Deliberative Democracy Institute and designed joint learning programs for scholar-practitioners of public dialogue in the United States and internationally. Prior to that, Ekaterina taught in the English Department at Saint Petersburg State University in Russia. She holds a PhD in Germanic Languages from Saint Petersburg State University.