Staff Profile

I am a lecturer in HCI in Open Lab. My work centres on rural informatics and Rural HCI.

I contribute to the Centre for Digital Citizens based in Open Lab researching the impacts of mis- and disinformation, and lead a rural informatics research agenda. 

My research is at the cross-section of social and political theory and sociodigital design and examines the role of civil society and other forms of active citizenship in shaping their communities.

I have previously been a research associate working within DERC (Digital Economy Research Centre) and EPSRC NetworkPlus Social Justice in the Digital Economy. I have also worked as an Innovation Fellow as part of the Centre for Digital Citizens.

My work involves taking a participatory action research approach to collaboration with a range of community organisations, carrying out ethnographic fieldwork and designing, deploying, and evaluating novel consultation technologies and sociodigital interventions, concentrating on the role of stakeholders, the meaningfulness and validity of data as part of campaigning, consulting, and everyday life, and the impacts of digital innovation on marginalised communities.

My research, published in leading HCI conferences, has investigated the role of the researcher, and stakeholder power and influence during technology deployments related to local decision-making, explored the interplay between data, knowledge, and evidence in local-level policymaking, on the creation of spaces for civic discourse, and on the way citizen-led organisations can create resources for democratic action through configuring participation during local consultation.

Current areas of active research are Rural Informatics & Online Disinformation.

CSC3731 Human-Computer Interaction: Interaction design

CSC8022 Human-Computer Interaction

CSC8609 Project in Human-Computer Interaction [final project supervision]

CSC3094 Major Project and Dissertation in Computer Science (HCI) [final project supervision]

previous modules:

CSC8601 Systems & Societies (MSc Human-Computer Interaction)

• Articles

  • Johnson IG, Vlachokryiakos V. Socio-digital Rural Resilience: An Exploration of Information Infrastructures Within and Across Rural Villages During Covid-19. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2024, CSCW1(8), 27. In Press.
  • Johnson IG, Puussaar A, Manuel J, Wright P. Neighbourhood Data: Exploring the Role of Open Data in Locally Devolved Policymaking Processes. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2018, 2(CSCW), 83.
  • Puussaar A, Johnson IG, Montague K, James P, Wright P. Making open data work for civic advocacy. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2018, 2(CSCW), 143.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)

  • Johnson IG, Crivellaro C. Opening research commissioning to civic participation: creating a community panel to review the social impact of HCI research proposals. In: CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2021, Yokohama, Japan: ACM.
  • Johnson IG, Al-Shahrabi D, Vines J. From Creating Spaces for Civic Discourse to Creating Resources for Action. In: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’20. 2020, Hawaii: ACM.
  • Johnson IG, MacDonald A, Briggs J, Manuel J, Salt K, Flynn E, Vines J. Community Conversational: Supporting and Capturing Deliberative Talk in Local Consultation Processes. In: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2017, Denver, Colorado, USA: ACM.
  • Johnson I, Vines J, Taylor N, Jenkins E, Marshall J. Reflections on Deploying Distributed Consultation Technologies with Community Organisations. In: CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2016, San Jose, CA, USA: ACM Press.

• Reports

  • Elstub S, Johnson I, Puttick R, Wilkinson M. Assessing the Potential of Mini-Publics to Promote Evidence Uptake in Social Policy and Practice. Newcastle: Nesta, 2018.
  • Elstub S, Johnson I, Puttick R. Overcoming Inequalities in Citizen Participation in Participatory Budgeting. Newcastle: Edinburgh City Council, 2016.