Dr Andy Yuille guests on the Transforming Tomorrow podcast to explain what citizens' assemblies are and why they matter
8 July 2026
Professor Jan Bebbington invited Dr Andy Yuille, Research Fellow at the Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester, to join the Transforming Tomorrow podcast to discuss citizens’ assemblies and their potential role in shaping climate policy.
The Transforming Tomorrow podcast, hosted by the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, aims to make the complex understandable and the theory practical. Professor Jan Bebbington invited Dr Andy Yuille, Research Fellow at the Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester, to join the podcast to discuss citizens’ assemblies and their potential role in shaping climate policy (pod.co/transforming-tomorrow/understanding-citizens-assemblies).
The podcast is available at the following link:
He takes listeners through the ways that citizens’ assemblies create understandings about people's thoughts about the environment and government policy, and how they show that members of the public can take informed positions on difficult policy decisions.
We encounter the concept of deliberative mini-publics, and how they can reflect the broader population to ensure views of assemblies reflect those of the public at large; discuss where and at what level climate assemblies operate; and understand how they are formed and operate, and the disqualifying factors for taking part.
Andy talks about his work on the Energy Demand Research Centre’s citizens’ panel, ‘Our Energy Futures’; and discusses the polarisation of society and how assemblies might address this and help to build trust in government – providing assemblies’ recommendations are acted on and better communicated.
Citizens' assemblies are an effective means to understand public views on complex, controversial issues like climate, and can provide rich and meaningful inputs to policy-making processes.
More details about the Our Energy Futures panel can be found at: