Corey Jackson began his undergrad at the University of Illinois as a political science major in 2005. Not long into his college journey, he noticed that everywhere he looked, he was also seeing the benefits of integrating more technical training into his developing skill sets. While learning about political economies and international development he was simultaneously leaning deeper into various technologies. He was determined to find a way to combine all these elements into his education.
Around this time, the University of Illinois was just launching its new Illinois Informatics Institute, which opened pathways for many multi-disciplinary students to access information and technology studies outside of their core curricula. Even though this initiative was technically separate from the Illinois iSchool, the new institute intersected with the broader field of information and technology studies in countless ways. Eager to get involved, Jackson immediately added technology and informatics studies to complement his core political science focus.
His first introduction to information and technology studies happened while working on projects that converged with faculty members at the Illinois Library and Information Science School. In one of these projects, in partnership “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) based out of MIT, Jackson developed a proposal designed to provide kids in São Tomé and Príncipe (a country in central Africa) with classroom computers. This formative experience served as one of the early road signs indicating that he was heading in the right direction professionally. During this process, he was first introduced to the Syracuse iSchool by way of Jon Gant, a former Syracuse professor who was teaching at Illinois (currently at North Carolina Central University). The idea of someday tapping into the renowned education offered in Hinds Hall was seeded in his brain. Ultimately, he would follow through on a couple more goals and better focus his vision before Syracuse University’s iSchool became a critical part of his long-term plan.
The research opportunities that opened up due to his contributions to the OLPC program and his relationships with those colleagues helped carry him through the rest of his undergraduate and master’s programs. Once finished with his bachelor’s, Jackson dove straight into the Library and Information Science master’s program at the Illinois iSchool.
Jackson’s aptitude for research is a testament to his inquisitive nature. He regarded post-graduate ambitions as an opportunity to capitalize further on his strengths, while also giving attention to areas he hoped to develop. In many ways, his experience with the OLPC project was responsible for first opening his eyes to a potential future in academia and his eventual matriculation into Syracuse’s iSchool for a doctoral program. “The major benefit of a PhD program is that you get to build up that toolbox and home in on becoming an expert user with those tools,” he explains.
Between finishing his master’s and beginning his doctoral program, he dedicated time to refining his data skills—experimenting with data science techniques, practicing text mining methods, and applying what he had learned during his master’s program. Upon joining the doctoral program at Syracuse, he used these skills to explore human behaviors in digital citizen scientists – fascinated by what motivated and inspired unpaid community members to collaborate with institutional scientists, he ultimately chose to focus his PhD dissertation on the topic.
While composing his dissertation, Jackson also applied to jobs near and far, hoping to land something just as he finished his post-grad work. The process paid off, and he earned a spot at UC Berkeley as a lecturer in their Master’s in Data Science (MIDS) program. As a virtual lecturer in this role, Jackson was working part-time from Syracuse, NY, teaching industry professionals how to use data science for business strategies. After finishing his PhD, he moved out to California and took a postdoctoral fellowship in UC Berkeley’s iSchool, and really started to find his groove in teaching.
After a year at UC Berkeley, Jackson began exploring opportunities for faculty positions at universities nationwide. It was the The Information School at the University of Wisconsin- Madison that finally won him over, and in 2020, he started in a position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate before becoming Assistant Professor in the Information School.
In the years since, the UW-Madison Information Studies program has expanded well beyond its original focus on library science, with faculty size more than doubling. During this time, Jackson, in collaboration with two other faculty members, established the Collaborative Computing Group, a research center dedicated to examining human behaviors in online systems. His research builds on citizen science and has expanded to working with local and municipal governments to democratize governance in policy development, artificial intelligence (AI), and civic decision-making. He aims to develop more robust participatory models and digital tools to make governance processes more transparent, inclusive, and responsive to community needs. Jackson’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the UW-Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education.
“Our goal is to develop effective methods for gathering feedback, ideas, and perspectives from historically underrepresented groups and facilitating discussions on key policy areas, such as the use of AI in the public sector. Beyond the online space, we focus on translating this data into meaningful insights that can inform and support decision-makers.”, says Jackson. The focus of his work has recently shifted more towards how the research will land on the desks of policymakers. All of these data represent real people’s lives, making him even more driven by his political science roots. He’s compelled to collect clean data and package it in a way that tells the right stories about the real needs of the communities being represented.
Jackson is in the somewhat rare territory of having personally experienced three of the top iSchools in the country. He possesses a nuanced understanding of the ways they each contribute to the greater field and discipline. His time at the Syracuse iSchool, as he says, “stands out because of the collaboration. I was able to work with faculty in a lot of different areas. One of the things I most admired about the Syracuse environment was the collegiality; the people there really make up the great experience which is the Syracuse iSchool.”