James Joseph O'Donnell (born 1950) is a classical scholar and University Librarian at Arizona State University. He formerly served as University Professor at Georgetown University (2012-2015) and as Provost of Georgetown University (2002-2012). O'Donnell was previously Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania (1996–2002). He is a former President of the American Philological Association (the national learned society for academics who work on the ancient world) and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. From 2012 to 2018, he chaired the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies.
O'Donnell writes and lectures on topics of the late Roman Empire, Augustine of Hippo, and also on the impact of information technology in the modern academic and cultural world. He was an early adopter of the World Wide Web for academic collaboration within the humanities. He co-founded and has been involved with Bryn Mawr Classical Review since it was founded in 1990.[1] In 1994, he offered the first Internet MOOC when 500 students around the world participated (through gopher and email) in his University of Pennsylvania seminar on the life and work of St. Augustine.[2]
- ^ Bryn Mawr Classical Review (ISSN 1055-7660)
- ^ For description, see: "Augustine on the Infobahn".; for O'Donnell's reflections on the current context, see "The Future Is Now, and Always Has Been".