Eric Gordon is a professor of civic media and the director of the
Engagement Lab at Emerson College in Boston. His research focuses on the transformation of public life and governance in digital culture, specifically looking at the context of equitable and generative “smart cities.” For the last ten years, Professor Gordon has explored the role of play and creativity in civic life, looking at how game systems and playful processes can augment traditional modes of civic participation. He 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 has created over a dozen games for public sector use and advised organizations on how to build their own inclusive and meaningful processes. He is the author of two books about media and cities (
The Urban Spectator (2010) and
Net Locality (2011)) and is the editor of
Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice (MIT Press, 2016) and the forthcoming
Ludics: Play as Humanistic Inquiry (Palgrave, 2020). His most recent monograph,
Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency (Oxford University Press, 2020) examines practices in government, journalism and NGOs that reimagine innovation beyond efficiency to focus on play and care.
