Cathy N. Davidson is an American scholar and university professor. Beginning July 1, 2014, she is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has served as the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English at Duke University since 1996 and has held a second distinguished chair as the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies since 2006. She has served in leadership roles at Duke and a variety of organizations and has authored or edited 18 books. Her work for the last decade has focused on technology, collaboration, cognition, learning, and the digital age.