Technology Scholar Cathy Davidson Joins the Graduate Center

Leading technology scholar Cathy N. Davidson will join the GC's English Ph.D. program faculty effective July 2014. Davidson is currently the John Hope Franklin Humanities Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English at Duke University. She is also cofounder of HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory), a coalition of individuals and institutions dedicated to collaborative thinking about teaching and learning innovation.

Beginning this summer, the Graduate Center will become an administrative hub of HASTAC. The HASTAC-administered MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition will be split between Duke and the University of California Humanities Research Institute.

Davidson will also direct, from the Graduate Center, the Futures Initiative, a CUNY-wide program that will advance the collaborative and participatory innovation in higher education, and involve both faculty and graduate students from affiliated institutions.

In response to the announcement, Davidson remarked, "The Graduate Center has some of the best scholars and graduate students in the country as well as excellent leadership in the areas of innovation, technology, and the future of higher education. The Graduate Center can be, and will be, pivotal in higher education innovation. I'm so proud to be part of such a fine public urban university system."

Chase F. Robinson, Interim President of the Graduate Center, noted, "In combination with other faculty appointments and academic initiatives, her presence will accelerate the Graduate Center's emergence as a national leader in the digital humanities, interdisciplinary scholarship, and Ph.D. education."

Davidson brings wide experience and expertise to the Graduate Center and the CUNY system. Appointed by President Obama to the National Council on the Humanities, she has published more than twenty books, most recently Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking Penguin, 2011), and The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (MIT Press, 2010).