Eric Gordon

Dr. Gordon studies technology, democracy, and public engagement, with a specific focus on the role of narrative, data, and algorithms on institutional trust and governance. He specializes in collaborative research and design processes, and has served as an expert advisor for local and national governments, as well as NGOs around the world, designing responsive processes that help organizations transform to meet their stated values. He is specifically recognized for his work in civic games, designing games to foster democratic participation in the US, Egypt, Bhutan, Romania, and many other countries. He is a founding member of the RethinkAI collective which works with communities and local governments around the US to build community-centered use cases of generative AI for public value. He is the author of over 50 articles and chapters on media and urbanism, and the author of two books on the topic: The Urban Spectator (Dartmouth, 2010) and Net Locality (Blackwell, 2011). He is the co-editor of Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice (MIT Press, 2016) and Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry (Palgrave, 2021). His most recent monograph, Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency (Oxford University Press, 2020) looks at collaborative design practices in the context of emerging technology inside government and journalism. And his new book, Generative Listening: How We Can Leverage New Tech to Build Trust will be published by MIT Press in 2026. Before coming to BU, Dr. Gordon was a professor and the founder and director of the Engagement Lab at Emerson College.