Cynthia Farrar is a Research Scholar at ISPS, and Lecturer in Political Science and Ethics, Politics, and Economics.  At ISPS, she directs a project on deliberation and local governance http://www.yale.edu/isps/programs/ddlg.html and the Ford Foundation-funded Difficult Dialogues project http://www.difficultdialogues.org/.

Farrar teaches the history of political thought and the theory and practice of democracy, ancient and modern, with a special focus on deliberative democracy.
Farrar is the author of The Origins of Democratic Thinking: the invention of politics in classical Athens, (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Farrar has written extensively on the implications of ancient direct democracy for modern challenges, including, most recently, "Power to the People?", in Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece, edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, and Robert Wallace (University of California Press, 2007), and  "Greek Political Theory as a Response to Democracy" in John Dunn, ed., Democracy (Oxford 1992).   Her writings on deliberative democracy include "Deliberative Polling: from experiment to community resource", with James Fishkin, in John Gastil and Peter Levine, eds., The Deliberative Democracy Handbook, Jossey-Bass 2005. http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/handbook/

Farrar pursues strategies for energizing citizenship, particularly at the local level.  In consultation with James Fishkin, and with the support of ISPS, she has adapted the Deliberative Polling method for local use and continues to explore its potential as a tool for local and regional governance. Since 2003, Farrar has coordinated the local/national multi-site Citizen Deliberations for MacNeil/Lehrer Productions' By the People project. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/btp/

Since 2002, she has organized the annual Greater New Haven Citizens Forum on behalf of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. In 2005, again for the Community Foundation, and with the assistance of Ph.D. candidates Jennifer Green and Sheree Bennett and recent Yale graduate Elizabeth Smiley, Farrar carried out a door-to-door recruitment and deliberation in New Haven's Hill neighborhood.
Farrar works with Don Green and other ISPS colleagues as well as graduate students to design research projects based on these initiatives. Several articles are currently being prepared for publication.

In 2007, Farrar created Purple States (http://www.purplestates.tv/home/about), which uses online video to give the public a chance to experience and interpret politics for themselves, through the eyes of a group of five ordinary citizens.
Cynthia Farrar received her Ph.D. in Classics from Cambridge University in 1984 and a B.A. in History from Yale University in 1976.

 
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