Jane Suiter | |
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Occupation | Political scientist |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Trinity College Dublin |
Thesis | Chieftains delivering : political determinants of capital spending in Ireland 2001-07 (2011) |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Dublin City University[1] |
Jane Suiter is an Irish political scientist, professor and director of Dublin City University's Institute for Future Media, Democracy, and Society ("FuJo")[2] and research lead of Ireland's Constitutional Convention and the Citizens' Assembly.[3] She is the co-author or co-editor of three academic books and one guide book,[4][5] and over 40 journal articles.[6] In December 2020, she was named "Researcher of the Year" by the Irish Research Council[7] and in February 2021, she was promoted to the position of professor by DCU.[8]
Suiter began her career at the FT Group and AP Dow Jones, and joined The Irish Times in 1996, before becoming economics editor in 2001.[9][10] She earned a doctorate from Trinity College Dublin's political science department in 2010.[11] As a media commentator she has contributed to BBC News,[12] The Washington Post,[13] and The Late Debate on RTÉ Radio 1.
At Dublin City University, she has specialised in the fields of deliberative democracy, journalism, and disinformation.[14] In 2018 she led a research project "journalism and Leadership Transformation"[15] as well as a European Commission Horizon 2020-funded project "Provenance" with Science Foundation Ireland's ADAPT stream to tackle online disinformation.[16] She is a visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University.[17]
In 2020 she co-authored a study into behaviours and attitudes during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.[18] She is co-editor of the Taylor & Francis academic journal Journal of Contemporary European Studies.[19]
In 2011, Suiter created (with University College Dublin political scientist David M. Farrell)[20] "We the Citizens", a national initiative to increase public engagement with politics.[21] The pair convened the Constitutional Convention in 2012,[1] as well as the Citizens' Assembly on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution in 2016,[22] both of which reviewed potential constitutional changes in the Irish state.[13][23] This culminated in successful referendums; the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland introduced marriage equality and the Thirty-sixth repealed the constitutional ban on abortion. The project was awarded the Brown Medal for Democracy in 2019 by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University.[24] In 2020, Suiter, Farrell, TU Dublin's Yvonne Galligan and Simon Niemeyer of the Australian Citizen's Parliament,[25] received a research fellowship[26] to convene the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality.[27]
In 2021, Suiter convened a Citizen's jury for IPPOSI, a patients' advocacy group, to consider how medical information could best be centralised to ensure maximal patient benefit will minimise privacy and sensitivity concerns.[28]
Suiter is a member of the Social Sciences Committee of the Royal Irish Academy.[29]
Suiter married music journalist Leo Finlay in 1990. English rock band Blur, played at the reception in King's Inns, Dublin.[31][32] They had one son.[33] Finlay died in 1996.[33]