"Posjak" is the handle of John Parkinson a political scientist and theorist at the University of Warwick, UK. A specialist in democratic theory and institutions, especially deliberative democracy, he also works on the policy process in developed democracies; public space and the rituals and staging of democracy. He has published two books with Oxford University Press: Deliberating in the Real World (2006) and Democracy and Public Space (2012). A new book called Deliberative Systems: deliberative democracy at the large scale, edited with Jane Mansbridge of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, is being published by Cambridge University Press in July 2012.
John's other interests include languages and writing systems; popular physics and astronomy; independent travel; independent music, especially the immediate post-punk era; cycling and the outdoors.