Dear All, I am happy to share my latest academic article – *Evolving Prefigurative Politics in an Intentional Community: The Auroville Citizens’ Assembly Pilot* <https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/8DF9EFQSSQRMIEAX5YNM/full?target=10.1080/07393148.2024.2376425#abstract>– coauthored with Lesley Branagan in New Political Science. It will be of particular interest to anyone interested in prefigurative politics, direct and deliberative democracy, Citizens' Assemblies, and intentional communities – specifically Auroville (India). Abstract In this paper we explore how a Citizens’ Assembly project in Auroville – the largest intentional community in the world – sought to prefigure new practices in collective decision-making. A Citizens’ Assembly model is a democratic innovation that enacts a deliberative mode of political decision-making by everyday citizens. It has been used by diverse bodies, from social movements to nation-state governments around the world. Auroville’s 2021 Citizens’ Assembly pilot – concerning a water vision for Auroville – is a unique case study that enables us to make a distinctive contribution to the existing academic scholarship concerning Citizens’ Assemblies and prefigurative politics on two grounds. Firstly, Auroville is an intentional community shaped by specific spiritual and self-governance values – an uncommon setting for a Citizens’ Assembly that supports us to make specific empirical offerings not seen in the literature on Citizens’ Assemblies to date. Secondly, given that Auroville’s pilot Citizens’ Assembly sought to prefigure the community’s foundational ideals of “human unity” and “unending education” in its collective decision-making practice, we connect our analysis to the academic scholarship concerning prefigurative politics. In doing so, we uniquely draw together the scholarship concerning Citizens’ Assemblies and the literature concerning prefigurative politics to explore whether such democratic innovations have a transformative effect on the political contexts they are embedded in, which we freshly consider with a focus on local scale, and the role that institutionalisation might have in terms of ensuring the reproduction, and thereby lasting impact of such experiments, or conversely their nullification. *Dr. Suryamayi Aswini Clarence-Smith * (She/Her) Researcher, Educator, Activist [email protected] Skype: Suryamayi LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/suryamayi/> | ResearchGate <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Suryamayi-Clarence-Smith> My book, Prefiguring Utopia: The Auroville Experiment <https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/prefiguring-utopia-in-auroville>, is published by Bristol University Press: *Other Publications:* - 2024 (Forthcoming) “Evolving Prefigurative Politics in an Intentional Community: The Auroville Citizens’ Assembly Pilot” *New Political Science*. - 2024 (Forthcoming) “Prompting Spiritually Prefigurative Practice: Collective Decision-Making in Auroville, India.” *Eco‐communities: Surviving Well Together.* Ed. Jenny Pickerill. - Clarence-Smith, S. (2022) “Prefiguration and Utopia.” *The Future is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics. *Ed. Lara Monticelli. Bristol University Press. - Clarence-Smith, S. and L. Monticelli (2022) “Flexible Institutionalisation in Auroville: A Prefigurative Alternative to Development.” *Sustainability Science* 17*.* - Le Hunte, B., K. Ross, S. Clarence-Smith and A. Rosegger (2022) “Lessons from Utopia: Reflections on Peak Transformative Experiences in a University Studio in Auroville, India.” *Palgrave Handbook on Learning for Transformation*. Eds. A. Nicolaides, S. Eschenbacher, P. Buergelt, Y. Gilpin-Jackson, M. Welch, M. Misawa, A. Lim. - Clarence-Smith, S. (2021) “Auroville: An Experiment in Spiritually Prefigurative Utopian Practice.” *Transgressive Utopianism: Essays in Honour of Lucy Sargisson*. Eds. Lyman Tower Sargent and Raffaella Baccolini. Peter Lang (Ralahine Utopian Studies).