Simon Burall is the Director of Involve. He has long and extensive experience in the fields of democratic reform, governance, public participation, stakeholder engagement, and accountability and transparency. He has worked at the national level in Africa, Asia and Europe as well as on related issues of global governance and democracy.
In addition to his role with Involve, Simon is also Head of Dialogue at the ScienceWise Expert Resource Centre and a Fellow WWF UK . He has recently finished his term as Chair of Democratic Audit.
Before moving to Involve Simon was a Research Fellow at ODI from 2006 – 2009. His interests included stakeholder engagement in the reform of the international aid delivery system and how to make development finance more effective. Prior to this he was the Executive Director of the One World Trust from 1999 – 2005 where he initiated and oversaw the development of the influential Global Accountability Index. Simon has taught both science and English in Namibia and Zimbabwe and was an election monitor in Bosnia Herzegovina after the Dayton Agreement.
March 16, 2015
The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement has released the results of their website poll exploring what barriers individual researchers identify as stopping them engaging the public in their research. The accompanying blog post notes that nearly 30% of researchers point to lack of understanding about how to do engagement well as the main barrier. I find this…
February 19, 2015
Simon Burall, Director at Involve, shares his thoughts after attending a round table discussion at the Big Lottery Fund. The Big Lottery Fund wants to be able to fund worthwhile projects in every community in the UK. However, like any big, national organisation, it finds it hard to be connected to enough people from the…
December 10, 2014
Coming back to your RSS feeds after a long time is a bit like seeing an old friend after too long: it can take a bit of time to get going, but there are so many interesting things to catch-up on; so much fun to be had. I managed a partial catch-up last night and came across…
November 7, 2014
On Monday evening, along with Demsoc, Democratise and the Centre for the Study of Democracy, we hosted an open space exploring how civil society might capitalise on the momentum of the Scottish referendum to start a meaningful national conversation about democratic reform. The event was inspired by posts from me, Andy Williamson of Democratise and Anthony Zacharweski of Demsoc Andy…
Date: 03 Nov 2014
Date: 3 November 2014, 18:00 - 20:30 Venue: The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, W1B 2HW, London To register for the event, click here. Involve is exploring ways that we can help to create a national conversation about what democratic reform means for ordinary citizens. And we want this to influence any…
September 22, 2014
The moments when the opportunity for real constitutional reform come around are rare, very rare. This is as it should be. Such reforms have long-term implications for the relationship between citizens and government. This kind of change shouldn’t be made quickly; it requires reflection and a focus on the future of the nation as…
September 12, 2014
On 10 September, Involve joined other leading organisations in writing to the Times to call for a UK wide constitutional convention. Sir, The narrowing of the polls has led to a cascade of promises from the unionist political parties. Whatever the result of the vote, we need to decide where power in this country (or…
September 9, 2014
How politicians deal with the aftermath of the Scottish referendum is as important as the referendum itself. With less than two weeks to go until the Scottish referendum, things are inevitably coming to the boil. It is unsurprising that my ears pricked up when it was reported over the weekend that the no campaign is poised to offer…
August 12, 2014
How can public support for controversial and sensitive policies be understood and tested? Are referendums better or worse than polls and surveys? Can deliberative processes provide governments with clearer answers? A recent government response to a consultation suggests that deliberative processes might be the best way to gauge public support. I explore whether this is a…
Published: August 5, 2014
Yesterday the Telegraph published an article claiming that the government has plans to share "details of the financial history, qualifications and property wealth of millions of Britons" across Whitehall. I believe this article misrepresents the open policy making process that the Government is currently undertaking. Here's the response I sent to the editor yesterday: It is ironic that…
