Iñaki Goñi
Job Title
PhD Student
Research interests
Research interests
My PhD research is on the relationship between technology and democracy. I study how public dialogues on emerging digital technologies are designed, enacted (and sometimes resisted) by participants. I seek to explore dialogues as social technologies that must be carefully designed to meet and contest the ideal of deliberative democracy.
As a scholar, my research interests are centred around three broad areas:
- Public engagement and dialogue
- Engineering education
- Design and innovation studies
Background
I'm a psychologist specialising in interdisciplinary research. Before joining the University of Edinburgh for my PhD, I worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Engineering Design Initiative, Universidad Católica de Chile (DILAB UC). During that time, my research and teaching were mainly geared toward the intersection between engineering design, higher education, and responsible innovation. I have also worked extensively in public engagement, helping public and private institutions analyse and design expert and citizen consultations and dialogues.
I am currently leading the evaluation of the Scottish Parliament's efforts to embed deliberative democracy in legislative scrutiny, and also working with the Scottish Government on Collective Intelligence to explore the potentials and risks of emerging technology for democratic deliberation. I also collaborate with the Iswe Foundation as a data associate in their efforts to create a new civic technology to support citizens' assemblies for climate governance.
Among other projects, I have worked as a researcher and analyst in the use of Natural Language Processing for Chile's biggest participation platform called "Tenemos Que Hablar de Chile" [We have to talk about Chile, 2019–2022], Chile's Constitutional Convention of 2022, the Constitutional Council of 2023, and the Chilean National Policy for Education in Comprehensive Affectivity and Sexuality, among others. I also led the first public consultation to inform Chile's Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation (STKI) Strategy.
I have also served as coordinator, trainer, researcher and judge of the Savialab project aimed at collaborating with school teachers in outreach education to indigenous minorities and young people in rural areas across Chile [Winner of the 2018 UNESCO/AIRBUS Diversity Award for Engineering Education].
I have also served as part of editorial boards in academic journals on interdisciplinary social research. I currently serve as a book review editor in the Tapuya Latin American Science, Technology and Society Journal and the IEEE Transactions in Technology in Society. I am also part of scientific evaluators of the newly launched Editorial Faro UDD. Before that, from 2019 to 2022, I served as a board member of the Cogency Journal of Reasoning and Argumentation. From 2020 to 2022, I served as a board member of the Praxis Psy Journal of Interdisciplinary Psychology.
I currently work as an Associate Director of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Expertise (SKAPE). I am also a core member of the Centre for Technomoral Futures and serve as a Student Representative for PhD researchers in STIS.
PhD title and supervisors
Dialogues as public technologies: Towards a framework for public dialogue design in science and technology
Supervisors: Dr Eugénia Rodrigues and Dr Oliver Escobar
Publications
Recent ones include:
Goñi, J. (2024). What is “Dialogue” in Public Engagement with Science and Technology? Bridging STS and Deliberative Democracy. Minerva. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09551-1.
Goñi, J. (2024). Make it make sense: the challenge of data analysis in global deliberation. Deliberative Democracy Digest: https://www.publicdeliberation.net/make-it-make-sense-the-challenge-of-…
Goñi, J., Rodrigues, E, Parga, M, Illanes, M & Millan, M. (2024). Tooling with ethics in technology: A scoping review of Responsible Research and Innovation tools. Journal of Responsible Innovation. DOI: 10.1080/23299460.2024.2360228
Goñi, J. Raveau, M., & Fuentes, C. (2024). Analytical categories to describe imaginations about the collective futures: From theory to linguistics to computational analysis. Futures. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2024.103324
Goñi, J., Medina., A., Stormonth-Darling, J., & Stewart, J. (2024). Market research of existing Civic Technologies for participation. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781836016120
Zerilli, J., Goñi, J. & Masetti Placci, M. (2024). Automation Bias and Procedural Fairness: A Short Guide for the UK Civil Service. Edinburgh: BRAID. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13122943
Diaz, F & Goñi, J. (2024) What expertise for whose and what democratic politics? Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society. DOI: 10.1080/25729861.2024.2357383
Cortázar, C. Goñi, J., Ortiz, A. & Nussbaum, M. (2024) Are professional skills learnable? Beliefs and expectations among Computing Graduates. ACM Transactions on Computing Education. https://doi.org/10.1145/3641551
Hilliger, I., Goñi, J. & Cortazar, C. (2024). Trends Affecting Curriculum Reform in Engineering Education: A Scoping Review. International Journal of Engineering Education. 40(5).
Raveau, M., Goñi, J., Rodriguez, J., Paiva-Mack, I., Barriga, F., Hermosilla, M., Fuentes-Bravo, C. & Eyheramendy, S. (2023). Natural language processing analysis of the psychosocial stressors of mental health disorders during the pandemic. Npj Mental Health Research. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44184-023-00039-6
Goñi, J., Fuentes, C. & Raveau, M. (2023). An experiential account of a large-scale interdisciplinary data analysis of public engagement. AI & SOCIETY. DOI: 10.1007/s00146-022-01457-4
The full list of my publications can be found on Researchgate or Google Scholar
Teaching Experience in UC Chile
- Technological Wonders of Everyday Life (2022). Co-lecturer.
- Social and Technical Foundations of Innovation (2019 – 2022). Lecturer.
- Models of technology, entrepreneurship & design (2019 – 2022). Lecturer.
- Anthro-Design (2018 – 2022). Lecturer.