Michael Neblo's is Professor of Political Science and (by courtesy) Philosophy, Communication, and Public Policy at Ohio State University where he directs the Institute for Democratic Engagement and Accountability (IDEA). His research focuses on democratic theory, political psychology, political sociology, and how these fields relate to each other. His book Politics with the People: Building a Directly Representative Democracy (with Kevin Esterling and David Lazer) lays out a vision for revitalizing our democracy. His earlier book, Deliberative Democracy between Theory & Practice, cuts across the deadlock between supporters of deliberative democracy and their empirical critics by focusing on the core goals of the larger deliberative political system. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in a wide range of academic journals, including The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The American Political Science Review, The Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Analysis, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, Political Communication, The Journal of Medicine & Law, and Social Science & Medicine.
Neblo holds a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS) from Northwestern University. He teaches courses in deliberative democratic and general political theory from the introductory level up to graduate seminars. He has tertiary interests in the philosophy of social science, politics and the emotions, race politics, health politics, immigration, politics and technology, and politics and the arts. With various colleagues, Neblo has been the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Veterans Administration, the International Society for Political Psychology, the Ash Institute, and a large grant from the National Science Foundation to design and study electronic town-hall meetings with the cooperation of members of the U.S. Congress.