Jesper Simonsen

Research

Jesper Simonsen – Professor of Participatory Design

Personal Information: Professor Jesper Simonsen, B.Sc., Cand.Comm., Ph.D. Address: Degnehusene 26, 2620 Albertslund, Denmark. Email: [email protected] Website: https://forskning.ruc.dk/en/persons/simonsen/

Danish citizen, born in Søborg on July 22, 1961. Married in Michigan in 1995 to Kristen René Simonsen (Cand.Psych.Aut., Danish citizen since 2019). Two sons: Thomas René Simonsen (B.Sc., Cand.Scient. in Molecular Biomedicine, born 1999) and Peter René Simonsen (PBA in E-commerce, born 2001).

Professional Profile & CV: Jesper Simonsen is an internationally recognized expert in Participatory Design. His research and teaching focus on designing, implementing, evaluating, and improving IT systems through close collaboration with employees, management, citizens, patients, and other stakeholders. Since 1986, he has led innovative action research projects, and since 2004, he has collaborated with management and clinicians in the Danish healthcare system, with a particular focus on the EPIC healthcare platform.

Simonsen graduated from Roskilde University, earning his master’s degree in 1989. He has been a permanent faculty member since 1991. In 1993, he spent a year in California as part of his Ph.D. studies, working with renowned professors Terry Winograd (Stanford University) and Lucy Suchman (Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre).

He has authored over 160 research publications, including two seminal reference books on Participatory Design: Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design (2013) and Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Participatory Design (2025). Earlier key works include Participatory IT Design – Designing for Business and Workplace Realities (MIT Press, 2004 – also published as Danish textbooks by Samfundslitteratur, 2000; 2008). Simonsen initiated Roskilde University’s Humanities and Technology bachelor’s program in 2008. Together with 22 colleagues, he published the book Design Research: Synergies from Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2010), which helped define this new, participatory, and design-oriented field.

From 2012 to 2016, Simonsen led the university’s design-oriented Strategic Research Initiative, Designing Human Technologies, involving 75 colleagues from four departments and 15 research groups. During this period, he published, together with 49 colleagues, Situated Design Methods (MIT Press, 2014), which describes participatory methods within this research area. Since 2013, he has organized annual international Ph.D. courses in Designing Human Technologies in collaboration with colleagues from the Nordic countries, Estonia, and Italy.

In 2024, Simonsen received Roskilde University’s teaching prize, which he is using to fund a writing retreat for a new book. This book synthesizes years of research, presenting a systematic method to ensure that IT investments deliver the intended benefits, with a special emphasis on user involvement and Participatory Design.

Positions of Trust: Over his 38 years in public service, Simonsen has held more than 60 international and national positions of trust, serving as head or member of various boards and committees. Internationally, he initiated and chaired the Participatory Design Conferences Advisory Board (2014–2020). Since 2019, he has been a member of several advisory boards at Tallinn University in Estonia, representing the Scandinavian tradition in Participatory Design. Nationally, since 2003, he has led the corps of external examiners for 24 humanistically oriented IT university programs in Denmark: Board of external examiners for Information Technologies and Interactive Media Studies.