Nicole Curato is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. Her work lies in the intersection between sociology and democratic theory, and has been published in journals including Policy Sciences, Current Sociology, Journal of Contemporary Asia and International Political Science Review, among others.

She is currently working on a manuscript entitled ‘Democracy in a Time of Misery’, which seeks to develop a defensible theory of democracy amidst widespread suffering. This is based on the findings of her Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Early Research Career Award, entitled Building Back Better: Participatory Governance in a Post-Haiyan World (DE150101866) (2015-2018).