Hélène Landemore

Hélène Landemore is the Damon Wells '58 Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where she also holds a secondary appointment in Philosophy. Landemore's research focuses on democratic theory, political epistemology, constitutional theory, and the ethics and politics of artificial intelligence. She completed her doctorate at Harvard University, where her thesis examined collective intelligence as a justification for democracy, a concept that has informed her scholarly work.

Landemore is the author of several works in political theory. Her book "Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many" received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize for best book in liberal and/or democratic theory. In "Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century," Landemore analyzes Iceland's crowdsourced constitutional process and France's Citizens' Convention on Climate Change to advocate for citizen-centered democratic systems. She has co-authored "Debating Democracy" with Jason Brennan and co-edited "Digital Technology and Democratic Theory" with Lucy Bernholz and Rob Reich. In "Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule," Landemore explores the potential for everyday citizens to govern effectively under the right conditions.

Landemore's scholarship is informed by direct observation of democratic experiments, including the French Citizens' Convention for Climate and service on the Governance Committee of France's Citizens' Convention on end-of-life issues. She has advised the Parliament of Finland on crowdsourced law reform. Landemore's research has been featured in New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, and The New Yorker, and she has appeared as a guest on Ezra Klein's New York Times podcast.

In addition to her work in democratic theory, Landemore examines the relationship between democracy and artificial intelligence. She is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford and has advised the Democratic Inputs to AI program at OpenAI. At Yale, Landemore is a Faculty Fellow with the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, where she founded a research program on Citizens' Assemblies and the Governing x conference series. Landemore's work is widely cited in political science, democratic theory, and artificial intelligence ethics literature.