Billet de blogue | Jonathan van Geuns on Bridging the Gap Between People and Technology

Q&A with Jonathan van Geuns

Written by the DSH team*

Une version française de ce billet sera bientôt disponible.

The Data for Society Hub (DSH) team spoke with Jonathan van Geuns to learn more about his work with Ana Brandusescu, their involvement in this project, and their objectives for the year.

Can you tell me a bit about your background?

Jonathan van Geuns (JvG): I’m from the Netherlands and I originally worked at Leiden University. After studying international law, I sort of moved into innovation management, and I did projects with many cities in the Netherlands to build different types of open data portals. I’ve been doing projects related to innovation management and data governance for the last two or three years, and I’ve also been working with the U.S. government on projects related to participatory data governance.

I’m always a bit on the fringe between theory and the practical, or the implementation of the theory. I also have a background in design-thinking approaches — all of this will be useful to the project [with the Data for Society Hub].

Ana [Brandusescu] has a slightly similar background. She worked for the Web Foundation for a while, and then she became a Professor of Practice at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montréal (CIRM). She’s currently doing her PhD on AI governance at McGill, and she’s been involved with the CIRM for over two years. So, Ana has been involved longer than I have, but our work has really just started.