Ben Gansky

Ben Gansky is an artist, digital governance researcher, STS scholar, and community organizer. He holds a PhD in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology from ASU's School for the Future of Innovation in Society, where he was an NSF NRT trainee in Citizen-centered Smart Cities. Ben is a formally trained theatre artist, holding a BFA in Acting from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater and an MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University, where he also trained as a game designer.

After over a decade running a series of community arts spaces/programs, and developing and presenting his own creative work in venues across the United States and internationally, Ben began working as a narrative designer for SPACES, a virtual reality startup, where he eventually became lead producer for location-based installations and head of guest experience, developing the design and operations of VR centers in collaboration with partners including National Geographic (Webby Award for Best Immersive Experience, 2018) and SEGA.

Ben is the co-founder and executive director of Free Machine, a nonprofit collective developing narrative experiences and policy frameworks that enliven the intersection of progressive politics, emerging technologies, and sociotechnical imaginaries. 

Ben has worked with the Institute for the Future since 2018, when he was a Future for Good fellow; he spent 2019-2020 there as a Research and Engagement Manager in their Equitable Futures Lab, working on, among other projects, the California Governor’s Future of Work Commission. Ben remains a Research Affiliate at Institute for the Future. 

From 2023-24, Ben was the Director of Clinical Programs for Digital Public, a rights advocacy group supporting public interest digital governance processes, programs, and structures. At Digital Public, Ben developed the Digital Governance Design Clinic, a training program for emerging professionals (e.g. lawyers, public health professionals) to prepare individuals to participate in the collective governance of their respective fields' ongoing digital transformation. This program has received over $2m in funding from the Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network, and the NSF's Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies program.

Ben is deeply involved in the Making & Doing subfield of STS, having won awards for his creative research work from the 4S Making & Doing Section three times, served as a juror and reviewer for the section, and co-organized a ten-year retrospective panel on the M&D section at the 2025 4S conference. 

Ben's current work in the City of Minneapolis as a Principal Business Analyst for the municipal government's IT department also functions as the setting for a participant-ethnographic study. Ben is the only U.S.-based elected member of the Coordination Committee of Decidim, a Barcelona-based open source project providing a web-based platform for participatory democratic processes (e.g. participatory budgeting) to hundreds of governments and nonprofits throughout Europe and globally.