North American PB Research Board

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North American PB Research Board

The North American PB Research Board is a collaborative of academics and researchers committed to investigating and improving the process, outcomes, and impacts of participatory budgeting. The Board meets regularly to share current research and collaborate on shared work. If you want to learn more or are interested in joining the research board, please email ingrid@participatorybudgeting.org.

North American PB Research Board

Celina Su

Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York

Celina Su

Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York

Celina Su is a writer and academic based in New York. There, she is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, focusing on everyday struggles for collective governance. Her current book project centering radical democracy, Budget Justice: Racial Solidarities & Politics From Below, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. Celina has served on New York City's participatory budgeting Steering Committee since its inception in 2011. Her publications include Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University Press) and pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, n+1, and elsewhere, as well as creative works that examine the politics of social policy and civil society through poetics as a mode of inquiry.

Thea Crum

Associate Director of Neighborhoods Initiative at the Great Cities Institute of the University of Illinois at Chicago

Thea Crum

Associate Director of Neighborhoods Initiative at the Great Cities Institute of the University of Illinois at Chicago

In her current role as the Associate Director of the Neighborhoods Initiative at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago and her previous experience as Program Coordinator of the same, Thea’s work is centered around community engagement and development. She provides overall project management of initiatives and programs that have included the Community Economic Development Research Cluster, the Civic Leadership Training Program, serving as Assistant Director on the ChiWest ResourceNet capacity building project, and serving as Project Director for the Participatory Budgeting Chicago Initiative. From these positions and others, Thea brings over 15 years of experience in the areas of community development, capacity building, and civic engagement to the Board, which she has been a member of since 2014. She is deeply committed to Participatory Democracy, and she regularly gives public and conference presentations on Participatory Budgeting, guest lectures in graduate courses, and publishes research and practitioner reports. Thea recently presented on Advanced Participatory Budgeting at the Second White House convening on Participatory Budgeting in the United States.

Daniel Schugurensky

Professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University

Daniel Schugurensky

Professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University

Daniel Schugurensky is a professor in the School of Public Affairs and in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University, where he is the founding director of the Participatory Governance Initiative, the director of the master's in social and cultural pedagogy, and the coordinator of the graduate and the undergraduate certificates in social transformation.He has published more than 100 articles, book chapters and technical reports on a variety of topics, including adult education, community development, participatory democracy, citizenship education, social economy, civic engagement, higher education, migration, and volunteer work. One of his current projects focuses on school participatory budgeting.

Benjamin Goldfrank

Professor in the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University

Benjamin Goldfrank

Professor in the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University

Benjamin Goldfrank is a professor of Latin American politics at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. His research interests focus on the comparative analysis of experiments in participatory democracy. His continued interest in Participatory Budgeting and its origins as well as Participatory Democracy more broadly can be seen through the scope of his publications, which span throughout his career and include topics such as The Rise, Spread, and Decline of Brazil’s Participatory Budgeting (Palgrave, 2022), Deepening Local Democracy in Latin America: Participation, Decentralization and the Left (Penn State University Press, 2011), The Left in the City: Participatory Local Governments in Latin America (Latin American Bureau and Transnational Institute, 2004).

Ron Hayduk

Professor in the Department of Political Science at San Francisco State University

Ron Hayduk

Professor in the Department of Political Science at San Francisco State University

Ron Hayduk’s work on participatory budgeting appears in New Political Science and other venues. Hayduk’s work on immigration and social movements appears in the Journal of International Migration and Integration, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, Socialism and Democracy, Dialectical Anthropology, Jacobin and in other venues. His fuller biography is on the SFSU website.

Gary Hytrek

Professor of Social Geography at California State University, Long Beach

Gary Hytrek

Professor of Social Geography at California State University, Long Beach

Gary Hytrek is a professor of social geography at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) and the director of the M.A. program in geography. He is a community-based researcher trained in urban political economy whose research focuses on movement building and the potential to generate meaningful spaces of participation and self-determination. His research is driven by questions connected to social justice and human well-being. Hytrek has 25 years of experience conducting community-based research in Costa Rica, South Georgia, and in Los Angeles County. Hytrek founded La Escuela Bilingüe Para Los Latinos, an entrepreneurial literacy training program in South Georgia, and more recently co-founded the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community. In 2013, Hytrek brought Participatory Budgeting (PB) to Long Beach. He served on The California Endowment’s Planning Committee that established the Building Healthy Communities Initiative (BHC) in Long Beach, and later as The Endowment’s Evaluation and Learning Specialist. Currently, he is associate editor of Latin American Perspectives, and member of the Liberty Hill Bold Vision Funding Board. Hytrek has authored or coauthored over 50 articles, reports, and opinion pieces on topics ranging from positive youth development, housing affordability, workplace conditions, and participatory democracy for The California Endowment, Urban Geography, International Sociology, Journal of Historical Sociology, Latin American Perspectives, among other journals. His book, American Transformed: Globalization, Inequality, and Power, was published by Oxford University Press.

Lodewijk Gelauff

PhD Student in Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Lodewijk Gelauff

PhD Student in Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Lodewijk Gelauff is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He manages the PB Stanford platform (for voting in Participatory Budgeting) and the Stanford Platform for Online Deliberation (for structured small-group discussions through video chat without a human moderator) at the Crowdsourced Democracy Team. Lodewijk has been an active contributor and volunteer in the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community in various roles including as a founder and core organizer of the photography competition Wiki Loves Monuments, and was named the 2021 Wikimedia Laureate. His efforts with Wikimedia contribute to the democratization of information and knowledge, advancing the foundation’s vision of a world in which all people can share in the sum of all human knowledge.

Jude Miller (they/he)

Research Fellow, Participatory Budgeting Project

Jude Miller (they/he)

Research Fellow, Participatory Budgeting Project

Jude Miller joined PBP and the Board this Summer as a Research Fellow in the Participation Lab. They are currently finishing their Master’s degrees in Social Work and Social Policy at Washington University in St. Louis, where they have developed an interest in wealth and power redistribution, particularly as they relate to strategies for Reparations. Jude was drawn to PB as a community level means of redistribution, which they believe has the capacity to create massive change driven by community power. Jude is looking forward to facilitating the Board and learning from its members throughout his time with PBP.

Yvonne Yen Liu

Co-Founder and Co-Director, Solidarity Research Center

Yvonne Yen Liu

Co-Founder and Co-Director, Solidarity Research Center

Yvonne is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Solidarity Research Center, a nonprofit organization that builds solidarity economy ecosystems using data science, story-based strategy, and action research. SRC launched two projects informed by radical municipalism last year: the Municipalism Learning Series (theory) and Los Angeles for All (practice). Yvonne and her colleagues see participatory budgeting as the portal through which cities and social movements can introduce other participatory or direct democracy measures.

Tara Bartlett

Senior Research Analyst School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University

Tara Bartlett

Senior Research Analyst School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University

Tara Bartlett is a Senior Research Analyst for Arizona State University's Participatory Governance Initiative. Her research focuses on public policy, civic education, and democratic innovations, particularly among youth and within school communities. Drawing upon frameworks of experiential learning and participatory democracy, she employs methods such as community-based research (CBR) and participatory action research (PAR). Tara’s dedication to these areas stems from her passion for integrating opportunities for youth and families in decision-making processes, policy creation, and community empowerment initiatives. Before her current role, Tara spent 14 years as a middle school educator, significantly contributing to curriculum development and professional development in civics and democracy for K12 educators. She has extensive experience with civic education projects at local, national, and international levels, including roles with the Arizona Civic Coalition and several U.S. State Department initiatives.

North American PB Research Board

North American PB Research Board

Celina Su

Thea Crum

Daniel Schugurensky

Benjamin Goldfrank

Ron Hayduk

Gary Hytrek

Lodewijk Gelauff

Jude Miller (they/he)

Yvonne Yen Liu

Tara Bartlett

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