Roslyn Fuller

In 2020 she favourably reviewed Edward Snowden's Permanent Record for the LA Review of Books.

In 2019, Fuller followed up on Beasts and Gods with the publication of In Defence of Democracy, which has received endorsements from Democracy International and was positively reviewed by the Washington Post and the LA Review of Books.

Drawing on interviews with current and former adjunct lecturers, Fuller wrote a much-debated article on the exploitation of adjunct academics called Heartbreaking Stories from Academia: America’s Universities Treat Most Faculty Like Peons, and the Results Are Not Pretty. Originally published on Alternet in 2016, the article was subsequently re-printed by Salon and Truthdig.

In May 2016 Andrew Sullivan published an article in New York Magazine called Democracies end when they are too democratic in which he argued that democracies needed elites to "protect this precious democracy from its own destabilizing excesses." Fuller debated Sullivan in a much-discussed polemic article Democracy — Too Much of a Good Thing?, which was called "an amusing exploration of the topic" by Matt Taibbi and even became the topic of a class assignment at Duke University.

In 2016, Fuller ran as an Independent candidate in the 2016 Irish general election. She received 775 votes.

In 2015 Zed Books published Fuller's academic research into democracy as a general trade book: Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed its Meaning and Lost its Purpose. The book is an analysis of the origins of democracy, its modern applications and the resulting loss of "people power". The book has received endorsements from Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole, who called it "a timely and provocative look behind the clichés of Western politics" as well as professor of law Marjorie Cohn and Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Forbes has called Beasts and Gods "a visionary thought experiment . . . guaranteed to make you think differently about the trillion dollar bureaucracies we call democracy today."

Fuller has written extensively for publications around the world, including the LA Review of Books, The Nation, Salon, the Toronto Star, the Financial Times, Alternet and Spiked. Between 2014 and 2016, she was a columnist for RT OpEdge where she ran a legal column called “The Fuller Picture”.

Fuller also demonstrates that one of the commonly proposed political reforms – randomly selecting citizens into citizen assemblies or decision-making bodies (also called sortition) – not only misconstrues the role sortition played in the ancient Athenian democracy but ultimately enhances elite control by limiting decisions to small, externally controllable groups. Fuller expanded on this theme in her 2019 article Don’t be fooled by Citizens' Assemblies, published on Unherd.

Fuller also criticized the modern university education systems in an article in the Irish Independent in 2013.

In 2013 Fuller set up Wikilicious.net to raise money for organisations supporting whistle-blowers For the project she combined photos from her modelling career with information on whistle-blowers throughout recent history. The project has been widely covered in media around the world.

Following an initial interview on Tonight with Vincent Brown (TV3, Ireland) on the Savita Halappanavar case in 2012, Fuller is now regularly asked to comment on matters of democracy, whistle-blowing, international law, and politics with appearances on BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, ABC Australia, The Keiser Report, Headstuff, Worlds Apart and Redacted Tonight.

From 2012 to 2014 Fuller organised the annual Irish Bodypainting Competition, which has attracted media attention in Ireland, the UK and the US.

She then wrote her PhD at Trinity College in Dublin, graduating in 2010 as a Doctor in Philosophy (Law), for her thesis on Democracy and International Law.

In 2010 Fuller edited and contributed to Dublin: Ten Journeys, One Destination, a collection of short stories published by the Irish Writers' Exchange. In October 2011, the group won a special sponsors award at the MAMA Awards in Dublin.

In 2009 she appeared on the TV show Ireland AM with bodypainter Nina Moore to publicise the World Bodypainting Festival as well as enjoyed radio coverage on RTÉ's Mooney Show.

In 2008, Fuller co-founded the Irish Writers' Exchange, an organisation of both Irish authors and writers from around the world who have chosen to make Ireland their home away from home. The group contributes book reviews of current and classic fiction for Dublin-based multi-cultural newspaper Metro Éireann. Fuller and her book ISAK were mentioned in the 2009 edition of German travel guide Marco Polo for Dublin

In 2007, parts of the novel were adapted as a stage play performed at the Irish Writers' Centre.

Fuller wrote her first novel - ISAK - in 2005 while studying for the Bar Exam in Germany. The novel, which is set in the future, is an allegoric reflection of the issue of international terrorism, in particular questioning what precisely constitutes terrorism and which actions by governments or individuals can be subsumed under the term.

Fuller worked as a model between 2005 and 2012, especially in the areas of fine art, glamour and nude art work. She has posed for some of Ireland's best-known photographers (Vincent O’Byrne, Mike Brown - in 2012 nominated for the Black Spider Award for one of his photos of Fuller) and artists (Isobel Henihan, Sahoko Blake, the RHA). She has also worked abroad in Germany, the UK and Canada and has popularised Bodypainting in Ireland, having been chosen three times to model at the World Bodypainting Festival in Austria for special effects artist Raquel Guirro (Pan's Labyrinth). She is extremely short: only 4’10".

Roslyn Fuller (born 9 February 1980 in London, Ontario) is a Canadian-Irish author, columnist and expert on historical and digital democracy. She is the author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed its Meaning and Lost its Purpose and In Defence of Democracy.