Nicholas V. Longo is the inaugural director of the Rutgers Democracy Lab, which was created in 2025 at the Eagleton Institute of Politics with a singular mission: to strengthen American democracy. He is also a professor in the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.

Nick is an advisory board member for College Unbound, a college working to re-invent higher education for returning adult learners, where he also teaches in the prison education program. He consults with some of the leading national civic engagement organizations, including serving as a deliberative dialogue fellow for Campus Compact, a faculty consultant for AAC&U’s Institute for Experiential Learning and Engaged Dialogue, and an educator for the Constructive Dialogue Institute. He formerly served as a chair and professor of Global Studies and co-director of the Dialogue, Inclusion, and Democracy (DID) Lab at Providence College, where he was the 2022 recipient of the Innovation in Teaching Excellence Award. He was also a program officer at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, the inaugural director of the Harry T. Wilks Leadership Institute at Miami University in Ohio, and the director of Campus Compact’s national youth civic engagement initiative, Raise Your Voice.

Nick is author of a number of books, articles, and reports on civic education, deliberative dialogue, youth civic engagement, and community-based learning. His publications include Why Community Matters: Connecting Education with Civic Life (SUNY Press) and several co-edited volumes, including Creating Space for Democracy: A Primer on Dialogue and Deliberation in Higher Education and Deliberative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning for Democratic Engagement. He also published the free online guides: Practicing Democracy: A Toolkit for Educating Civic Professionals, along with the forthcoming Engaging Community: A Toolkit for Reciprocal Teaching and Learning Beyond the Campus (with AAC&U and Campus Compact).

He holds a master’s in public affairs and a Ph.D. in education from the University of Minnesota.

Research Interests

• Civic education
• Deliberative dialogue
• Youth Civic Engagement
• Community-based learning