Ryan Cordell

Ryan Cordell is an Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He holds affiliations as an Affiliated Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University and a Senior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography. Dr. Cordell's research bridges digital humanities, book history, and computational methods, focusing on textual circulation in 19th-century newspapers and modern library systems. He directs the Skeuomorph Press & BookLab, an experiential studio exploring book arts and maker culture.

Education: PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Virginia (2010), with a focus on apocalypticism in antebellum literature. Previously held academic positions at Northeastern University (2012-2021) and St. Norbert College (2010-2012).

Research Focus: Virality in historical media, computational text analysis, digital libraries, and the material culture of print. Current projects include the Virality of Racial Terror in US Newspapers (1863-1921) and the Viral Texts initiative mapping 19th-century newspaper reprinting networks. Recent grants include a $500k Mellon Foundation grant for racial terror studies and a Humboldt Fellowship supporting Berlin-based research.

Awards & Recognition: Ranked as an excellent teacher by UIUC students (2023, 2024), received the Northeastern CSSH Teaching Award (2014-2015), and led the award-winning Our Marathon Digital Archive project. His work has been featured in National Geographic, Wired, and NPR.

Grants & Labs: Directed the Surveying the Humanities MakerLab Movement (UIUC Research Board), co-led the Oceanic Exchanges global newspaper project, and manages the Skeuomorph Press lab. Current funding includes Mellon Foundation support for racial terror research and UIUC grants for maker culture studies.