Cathy Davidson

Cathy Davidson
Cathy Davidson in 2015
Occupation	Professor, Writer
Title	Distinguished Professor of English and Founding Director of the Futures Initiative
Awards	Educator of the Year (2012) Ernest L. Boyer Award (2016)
Website	www.cathydavidson.com
Academic work
Discipline	English
Institutions	City University of New York Duke University
Notable works	Now You See It The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age

Cathy N. Davidson is an American scholar and university professor. Beginning July 1, 2014, she is Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is also the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor Emerita of English at Duke University and held a second distinguished chair as the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies since 2006. She served in leadership roles at Duke and a variety of organizations and has authored or edited 18 books. Her work for the last decade has focused on technology, collaboration, cognition, learning, and the digital age.

Davidson was born in Chicago, received a B.A. from Elmhurst College, an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Binghamton University, and did postdoctoral studies at the University of Chicago. She has received honorary doctorates from Elmhurst College and Northwestern University. Prior to joining the faculty of Duke, Davidson was a professor of English at Michigan State University.

Davidson served as Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University from 1998 to 2006, with administrative responsibility for over 60 research programs in Duke’s nine academic and professional schools. She was responsible for designing technologies for research, teaching, and learning, and in 1999 helped create ISIS, the program in Information Science + Information Studies at Duke. Davidson also worked with colleagues to help create the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.

In 2002, Davidson co-founded (with David Theo Goldberg) the virtual organization HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), an international organization dedicated to rethinking the future of learning for the information age.

In 2003, Davidson initiated a program at Duke, in conjunction with Apple, to give free iPods to each member of the incoming class with no other requirements. This sparked harsh criticism and ridicule from the academic community and news media. The program was viewed as a success by Duke since it led to new applications for the iPod in an educational environment and inspired a new initiative among Duke students to innovate and collaborate.