I am an interdisciplinary researcher specialising in democratic studies, responsible design, and the social studies of technology, with a general interest in the relationship between technology and society. I am an Assistant Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, based at DILAB UC, with a shared appointment between the Schools of Engineering and Design. I hold a PhD in Science and Technology and Innovation Studies from the University of Edinburgh.
My work includes large-scale participatory processes, such as Chile’s constitutional reforms (2019-2022), deliberative processes in Scotland, and the Global Citizens’ Assembly for People and Planet. I have taught courses on responsible innovation, culture-centred innovation, and the social impact of technology.
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I collaborate with the Iswe Foundation as the data lead in their efforts to create a new civic technology to support citizens' assemblies for climate governance. I also work with the Scottish Government on Collective Intelligence to explore emerging technology's potential and risks for democratic deliberation. I have worked on the evaluation of the Scottish Parliament's efforts to embed deliberative democracy in legislative scrutiny and with Electoral Reform UK to understand how to implement deliberative democracy at the ultra-local level in Scotland.
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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.
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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].
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In 2024, I was elected to the Council of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST). I have also served as part of the editorial boards in academic journals on interdisciplinary social research. I currently serve as a associate editor in the Tapuya Latin American Science, Technology and Society Journal and the IEEE Transactions in Technology in Society. I am also part of the 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.
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I currently work as an Associate Director of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Expertise (SKAPE). I was also a core member of the Centre for Technomoral Futures.
Publications
Recent ones include:
- Goñi, J. “Iñaki.” (2026). Design principles of dialogue about science and technology and the design frictions they reveal: Towards a demo-technical analysis. Design Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2026.101390
- Goñi, J. “Iñaki.” (2025). Communicating Knowledge Otherwise: Reclaiming Latin American Participatory Action Research to a Global Citizen Assembly. Science for the People 27 (1). https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/vol27-1-rethinking-scicomm/communicating-knowledge-otherwise/
- Goñi, J. “Iñaki.” (2025). Designing participation: technical standardization and political embeddedness in technoscience. Critical Policy Studies, 1–20. DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2025.2560387
- Wilson, R., Tubiana, L. Patel, R., Goñi, I. & Levai, D. (2025). People in the Lead: A Citizens’ Track to Strengthen the Global Climate Regime as a COP30 Legacy. Iswe Foundation and European Climate Foundation
- Goñi, J. (2025). Can literature reviews be both interpretive and systematic? Revisiting critical interpretive reviews. International Journal of Social Research Methodology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2025.2552752
- Goñi, J. (2025). Breaking the deficit-dialogue binary with hybrids: Opening-up science-society models from the South. In Invernizzi & Medina (eds.) Diversifying Theory in STS: Latin American Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-5419-2_18
- Goñi, J. (2025). Continuously improving people’s panels at the Scottish Parliament – Lessons from our independent evaluation. SPICe Spotlight. Scottish Parliament: https://spice-spotlight.scot/2025/04/22/continuously-improving-peoples-panels-at-the-scottish-parliament-lessons-from-our-independent-evaluation/
- Goñi, J. (2025). Citizen Participation and Technology: Lessons from the Fields of Deliberative Democracy and Science and Technology Studies. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-04606-4.
- 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-data-analysis-in-global-deliberation/
- 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.
Teaching Experience in Edinburgh
- Knowledge, Expertise and Policy (2025). Guest Lecturer
- Controversies in Data Societies (2025). Guest Lecturer
- Research Design for Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (2025). Guest Lecturer