Prof. Dr. Gesche Joost
President

Born 1974 in Kiel

Brief biography
Gesche Joost was appointed the President of the Goethe-Institut in November 2024. As Professor of Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts, she works across disciplines at the interface of the arts and sciences. In her research, she deals with the implications of digitisation and artificial intelligence for society and examines structures of digital colonialism and growing inequality. She is active in various supervisory bodies, including the Board of Trustees of the ZKM and the Supervisory Boards of ottobock and ING DiBa. From 2015 until 2018, she represented the German government in the EU Commission as “Digital Champion”. In Berlin, she helped to establish important institutions, including the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society and the Einstein Center Digital Future. Education and academic career

• 2010-present: Full Professor of Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts
• 2018-present: Principal Investigator at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, Head of the research group Design, Equality and the New Commons
• 2017-2024: Member of the Board of the Einstein Center Digital Future
• 2016-present: Research Director at DFKI, German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Head of the research group Design Research Explorations
• 2008-2010: Junior Professor for Interaction Design & Media at the TU Berlin
• 2005-2018: Telekom Innovation Labs, development and establishment of the Design Research Lab
• 2007-2008: Visiting Professor for Gender & Design at the HAWK Hildesheim
• 2003-2005: Lecturer for experimental design with audio-visual media, KISD
• 2003-2007: PhD thesis Fundamentals of Film Rhetoric, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, graduated with a doctorate (summa cum laude)
• 2001-2002: Study of Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen
• 1998-2001: Scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation
• 1996-2001: Design studies, KISD Cologne International School of Design, graduated with a Diplom
• 1994-1996: Architecture studies, TU Braunschweig

Awards (selection)

• 2021: Lifetime achievement award from the German Designer Club DDC
• 2010: iF product design award
• 2008: Young Scientist Award of the Governing Mayor of Berlin
• 2006: Honoured 100 Minds of Tomorrow as part of the Germany – Land of Ideas initiative

Board positions and supervisory bodies (selection)

• 2022-present: Member of the Board of Trustees of the Goethe-Institut, 2023-2024 Vice President
• 2019-present: Member of the Board of Trustees of the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM)
• 2017-present: Member of the Supervisory Board of ING DiBa
• 2017-present: Member of the Supervisory Board of ottobock
• 2016-present: Co-founder and shareholder of Calliope gGmbH, a non-profit organisation for children’s digital education (www.calliope.cc)
• 2015-2023: Member of the Supervisory Board of SAP
• 2015-2022: Member of the Board of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation
• 2014-2017: Digital Champion for the EU Commission on behalf of the German government
• 2014-2018: Member of the Expert Council for Consumer Affairs of the BMJV
• 2014-2020: Appointed member of the EKD Synod of the Protestant Church
• 2014-present: Member of the Goethe Institute
• 2014-present: Member of the Programme Council of Futurium Berlin

Publications (selection) (November 2024)

Anthologies

• 2021. Herlo, B., Irrang, D., Joost, G., Unteidig, A., (eds.): Practicing Sovereignty. Digital Involvement in times of crisis, Transcript Bielefeld
• 2016. Joost, G. et al (eds.): Design as Research, Birkhäuser: Basel
• 2013. Joost, G.; Held, M.; Mareis, C. (eds.) Wer gestaltet die Gestaltung. transcript Bielefeld
• 2008. Joost, G.; Scheuermann, A. (eds.) Design as Rhetoric. Birkhäuser: Basel

Scholarly articles (selection)

• Tom Bieling, Gesche Joost (2018). Technology design and inclusion - Disability in the field of technology and design.  Aljoscha Burchardt, Hans Uszkoreit (eds.): IT for Social Inclusion: Digitalisation - Artificial Intelligence - Future for All (pp. 11-28). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter
• Herlo, B./Unteidig, A./Joost, G. (2018) Community Now? Unfrozen, Swiss Design NetworkSDN (ed.), Zurich: Triest Verlag
• Andreas Unteidig, Blanca Domínguez Cobreros, Elizabeth Calderon-Lüning & Gesche Joost (2017) Digital commons, urban struggles and the role of Design, The Design Journal
• Bieling, T.; Göllner, S.; Joost, G. (2013). Design driven Diversity - Diversity driven Design. Proceedings of IASDR 2013 - 5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research: ‘Consilience and Innovation in Design’. Tokyo: Shibaura Institute of Technology
• Joost, G. (2012). Participatory Forms of Design and the Realisation of Theory and Practice.  Hofmann, M. L. (ed.) The human factor. How architecture and design act as social catalysers. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 59-72
• Joost, G. (2011). Design as research. On the state of design research in Germany. Frank, U. (ed.). Eklat, Entwerfen und Konstruieren in Lehre, Anwendung und Theorie. TU Berlin, pp. 68-75
• Inbar, Ohad, Joost, Gesche, Hemmert, Fabian, Porat, Talya, and Tractinsky, Noam 2014. Tactful Calling: Investigating Asymmetric Social Dilemmas in Mobile Communications. Behaviour & Information Technology
• Bieling, T. / Martins, T. / Joost, G. (2014): A Tangible Interface for Information Exchange Addressing Deaf-Blind Users; in: Galtenco, H. (ed.): Universal Design 2014: Three Days of Creativity and Diversity; Proceedings of the International Conference on Universal Design, UD 2014, Lund University, Sweden, 16-18 June 2014; Assistive Technology Research Series Vol. 35; IOS Press, Lund. ISSN1383-813X (print), ISSN 1879-8071 (online)
• Hemmert, Fabian, Löwe, Matthias, Wohlauf, Anne, and Joost, Gesche 2013. Animate Mobiles: Proxemically Reactive Posture Actuation as a Means of Relational Interaction with Mobile Phones. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction TEI ‘13. ACM, New York, NY. 267-270
• Joost, Gesche (2012): Design, Gert Ueding et al (eds.): Historical Dictionary of Rhetoric, supplemental volume, Tübingen