W
University of Washington

faculty

John GastilGastil, John

http://faculty.washington.edu/jgastil
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994

Office: CMU 331
E-Mail: jgastil@uw.edu

John Gastil, Professor, has taught at the University of Washington since 1998. Gastil teaches courses on small group decision making, political deliberation, public scholarship, communication theory, and intercultural communication. Gastil received his Ph.D. in communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, and he received a B.A. in political science from Swarthmore College in 1989.

Gastil's most recent book is Political Communication & Deliberation (Sage, 2008), which shows how a broad conception of public deliberation can frame the wider array of scholarship on political communication. He is currently revising a book, The Group in Society, which provides an interdisciplinary review of research on how people communicate and interact in small groups (forthcoming from Sage in 2009; a preliminary draft is available online).

In 1993, Gastil wrote Democracy in Small Groups (New Society Publishers). The book has sold over 4,000 copies and become recommended reading at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, NASA, and numerous non-profits in the United States and abroad. In 2000, he wrote By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy through Deliberative Elections (University of California). This book built upon his previous work by showing how small group discussions can be integrated into the electoral process and public institutions. Gastil is also the co-editor, with Peter Levine, of The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century (Jossey-Bass, 2005), a book that brings together many of the diverse approaches to promoting citizen deliberation.

With the assistance of UW undergraduate students and other colleagues outside the University, Gastil has developed Election Day computer simulation game.

His current research focuses on a wide range of subjects, including the civic impact of jury service, the cultural underpinnings of public opinion, and the different approaches to integrating citizen deliberation into existing institutional, political, and cultural contexts. For more information on current projects, visit the Cultural Cognition Project, the Jury and Democracy Project, or the Australian Citizens Parliame

Selected Publications

Gastil, J., Black, L., & Moscovitz, K. (2008). Ideology, attitude change, and deliberation in small face-to-face groups. Political Communication, 25, 23-36. Political Communication.

Gastil, J., Deess, E. P., Weiser, P., & Meade, J. (2008). Jury service and electoral participation: A test of the participation hypothesis. Journal of Politics, 70, 1-16.

Gastil, J., Black, L., Deess, E. P, & Leighter, J. (2008). From group member to democratic citizen: How deliberating with fellow jurors reshapes civic attitudes. Human Communication Research, 34, 137-169.

Gastil, J., Burkhalter, S., & Black, L. (2007). Do juries deliberate? A study of deliberation, individual difference, and group member satisfaction at a municipal courthouse. Small Group Research, 38, 337-359.

Kahan, D., Slovic, P., Braman, D., & Gastil, J. (2006). Fear of democracy: A cultural evaluation of Sunstein on risk. Harvard Law Review, 119, 1071-1109.

Moy, P., & Gastil, J. (2006). Adult civic education through the National Issues Forums: A study of how adults develop civic skills and dispositions through public deliberation. Adult Education Quarterly, 54, 308-328.

Burkhalter, S., Gastil, J., & Kelshaw, T. (2002). The self-reinforcing model of public deliberation. Communication Theory, 12, 398-422.

Gastil, J., Smith, M., & Simmons, C. (2001). There's more than one way to legislate: An integration of representative, direct, and deliberative approaches to democratic governance. University of Colorado Law Review.