John Keane is founder of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster and Research Professor at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB). Born in Australia and educated at the universities of Adelaide, Toronto and Cambridge, he is a frequent contributor to media around the world. He is the author of Global Civil Society? (2003) and Violence and Democracy (2004) and is currently preparing a full-scale history of democracy - the first for over a century.