Greg Downey

Curriculum Vitae

Education

Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University, 2000

M.A. Northwestern University 1995

M.S. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989

B.A. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987

Areas of Research

History and geography of information, communication technology and labor

Research Impact

Greg Downey’s research uses historical and geographical methods to uncover and analyze “information labor” over time and space. He has studied the stories of telegraph messenger boys in the early 20th century and remote closed-captioning workers in the late 20th century.

Downey’s most recent work focuses on interdisciplinarity in academic knowledge production, the “metadata labor” of library and information science professionals, and the intertwining of algorithmic technology with career advising and job placement.

Recent Publications

Books

2011. Technology and Communication in American History (SHOT/AHA historical perspectives on technology, society, and culture). Society for the History of Technology / American Historical Association.

2008. Closed Captioning: Subtitling, Stenography, and the Digital Convergence of Text with Television. Johns Hopkins University Press.

2002. Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Technology, and Geography, 1850-1950. Routledge.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

2025. “Revealing invisible information labor.” The SAGE Handbook of Data and Society: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Critical Data Studies.

2024. “The spaces of labor in information history.” Writing Computer and Information History: Approaches, Reflections, and Connections.

Recent Awards and Honors

2025–present: Director, Information School, UW–Madison

2014–2014: Associate Dean for Social Sciences, College of Letters & Science, UW–Madison

2007: William H. Kiekhofer Distinguished Teaching Award. Campus-wide award bestowed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Recent Grants

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

• “To conduct a set of case studies on the sustainability of social science data archives.”

National Science Foundation

• “Understanding Innovative Science: The Case of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery”

Courses

J201: Introduction to Mass Communication

LIS201: The Information Society