History of openDemocracy

openDemocracy launched in 2001 – find out how we got to then and from then to now

Editors-in-chief and chief executives

Anthony Barnett 2001-07

Tony Curzon Price 2007-12

Magnus Nome 2012-14

Mary Fitzgerald 2014-21

Peter Geoghegan 2021-23

Satbir Singh, chief executive, appointed 2023

Aman Sethi, editor-in-chief, appointed 2024

More about our history

Published in:Home: Feature
👍openDemocracy turns 20: from 9/11 to the climate crisis

Written by: Adam Ramsay All articles by Adam Ramsay

Over 20 years, oD has developed from a small ‘magazine on the internet’ into a force for truly global reporting and...

Published in:Home: Feature
👍Why we founded openDemocracy 20 years ago – and why it worked

Written by: Anthony Barnett All articles by Anthony Barnett

At the turn of the millennium, we needed a radical new media outlet that could keep up with a changing world. Now,...

Published in:Home
👍‘Go ahead, lad’: the beginning of openDemocracy – a tribute to David Shutt

Written by: Anthony Barnett All articles by Anthony Barnett

The late Liberal Democrat peer played a seminal role in the origins of openDemocracy.

Published in:Home
👍An improbable team

Written by: Susan Richards All articles by Susan Richards

It took an unlikely combination of talents to start building openDemocracy’s Tower of Babel, comments one of its founders