Professor Dan Schiller, who has been a member of the GSLIS faculty since 2001, will retire from the University of Illinois on May 31.
"GSLIS has been my home for thirteen years. The cooperative spirit of the School, which staff, faculty members, and school administrators actively create day to day, has been an inspiration to me. Going forward, I plan to pursue my research in the political economy of information and in telecommunications history, and I hope to continue to teach in GSLIS and to supervise doctoral students as an emeritus professor," Schiller said.
A historian of information and communications, Schiller brought to GSLIS expertise in the areas of telecommunications history, information policy, and the cultural production and political economy of capitalism. He taught courses on these topics at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
"It has been a very great privilege for GSLIS to have had Dan Schiller here on the faculty," said Interim Dean Allen Renear. "Dan's relentless probing analysis of trends in information and communication policies are known around the world, and here at the University his engaging teaching is legendary. We are very sorry that we may be seeing a little less of him, of course, but we are pleased that he will be staying involved in GSLIS—his work, both research and teaching, is vital to understanding and addressing the pressing problems facing us today."
The author of half a dozen books and many research articles, Schiller has written extensively on the development and current structure of digital capitalism—the system of market relationships that is predicated increasingly on networks. His recent research focuses on the role of information and communications in today's financial/economic crisis and on the history of U.S. telecommunications infrastructures.
Currently, Schiller serves on the editorial boards of several scholarly publications: tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique; Global Media and Communication; Chinese Journal of Communication; Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media; and Television & New Media. In addition, he is coediting an upcoming University of Illinois Press book series, Geopolitics of Information.
Since 2001, Schiller has held a concurrent appointment as professor in the Department of Communication within the University of Illinois’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His previous appointments include professorships at Wuhan University; the University of California, San Diego; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Temple University. He also has held positions at Columbia University and the University of Leicester. Schiller earned a PhD in communications at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) in 1978, a master’s in communications at Penn in 1976, and bachelor’s in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin in 1972.