Professor Greg Downey’s career defies disciplinary boundaries, spanning from computer science to history and geography, from journalism and mass communication to the history of information.
For 25 years, Downey has served UW–Madison in a range of capacities, including a stint as chair of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a recent decade-long leadership role as Associate Dean for Social Sciences in the College of Letters & Science (L&S). As associate dean, he worked closely with department chairs across L&S to meet the needs of a range of units, gaining valuable insights into how to be effective as the leader of a department at UW–Madison.
As fall semester 2025 kicks off, Downey is bringing his uniquely interdisciplinary perspective and extensive leadership experience to the iSchool Director’s chair, taking the helm in the midst of transformation and growth and succeeding Professor Alan Rubel in the role. At a time of increasing collaboration with other units on campus, Downey said his penchant to “live between two different worlds” — technology and the social sciences — will be especially valuable, especially with the iSchool now in its state-of-the-art new home, Morgridge Hall.
“We are going to be a central crossroads for the whole campus,” Downey said. “I’m excited about reintroducing ourselves to the rest of the university community and building new connections and partnerships with other departments, both within this building and across UW–Madison.”
A career built on connections
Downey started out as a computer science scholar, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the field from the University of Illinois. “I started off as a computer science major who was really interested in the social sciences,” he said. After a stint working in industry in Chicago in the early 1990s, Downey leaned back into academic study just as the World Wide Web was becoming accessible. “I was curious about how these technologies were connecting with society in different ways,” he explained. This launched an academic career exploring the intersections of history, technology, and society, including a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in History of Technology and Human Geography.
“Along the way, there were markers that suggested I could serve at an Information School,” Downey noticed. “I did a master’s thesis on libraries and book mobiles because I was interested in how information moves across space and time,” he said. “And my dissertation was about the telegraph, and how the messengers who handled information—often low-paid teens and preteens—lived their lives and were impacted by this technology.”
In 2001, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship, Downey sought out full-time faculty roles. At UW–Madison, there was a timely cross-disciplinary opportunity for a joint appointment in both SJMC and the School of Library and Information Studies, which later became the iSchool. The position seemed tailor-made for him. “They saw that I could live between two different worlds and be successful, and that’s been my career here for 25 years now in Madison.” The next phase: leading the iSchool as it settles into its new home, Morgridge Hall, and continues expanding research, programs and course offerings at the intersection of technology and humanity.
‘An exciting time’
As artificial intelligence (AI) proliferates, Downey explained how the iSchool is positioned as a uniquely credible voice on the social impacts of these new technologies. “The iSchool has a long history of studying and understanding the opportunities and risks of introducing brand new technologies into important social situations,” he said. Whether studying the introduction of computers in libraries or the advancement of tech-enabled surveillance capabilities, scholars at the iSchool “have been tracking these things for 100 years,” Downey said. “From a historical lens, I do think it’s an exciting time. There are a lot of changes happening, but it’s really hard to predict where this will all go in five years.”
Through research and education based in the iSchool, he said, big and daunting questions will be explored: “How can these powerful tools be mobilized for the public good? What unintended harms or consequences should we be looking out for? Beyond the people developing the technologies, what are the benefits and risks for everyone else in society?”
In recent years, program growth at the iSchool has allowed students and faculty to take new approaches to these pressing questions. The growth of the Information Science undergraduate major—to over 400 students since launching in 2022—has been particularly striking to Downey. “Students are excited about the Information Science major because it allows them to explore different fields and look at how technology or information is impacting those fields,” he said. He noted that he wants to prioritize helping students find connections between iSchool programs, around the common theme of interactions between information, technology, and people.
“This is a moment where we can be very clear about reasserting the value of what the iSchool does, which is to demonstrate that technology never develops or benefits people in isolation,” Downey said. “It never develops outside of a community, a culture, a context.”
Finally, Downey explained how being elected as iSchool Director creates a responsibility to lift up the faculty, staff and students who make the department the vibrant community it is today. “My colleagues are the ones who hired me, so I want to give back and help keep this community thriving,” he said, acknowledging the current tumultuous time for federal research funding and universities more generally.
He emphasized, “I’m pleased and proud that we have such great people in this department and in CDIS who are rising to the challenges and opportunities of this moment.”