Colin Rhinesmith

Colin Rhinesmith is nonresident fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and an associate professor and director of the Digital Equity Action Research (DEAR) Lab in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research examines the social, technical, and policy contexts that shape people’s access to and use of information and communication technologies in local communities.

Rhinesmith is a faculty affiliate with the Social & Behavioral Science Institute and the Institute for Government and Public Affairs at Illinois, a research fellow with the Quello Center at Michigan State University, and an editor-in-chief of The Journal of Community Informatics. He is the author of the book, “Digital Equity Ecosystems: How Community Coalitions Reduce Inequality and Strengthen Democracy (University of California Press 2026).”

Rhinesmith has worked with civil society organizations, government agencies, and philanthropic organizations to advance digital equity through community-engaged and participatory research projects. His research contributes to the fields of community informatics, engaged scholarship, and information policy.

Previously, Rhinesmith was the founder and director of the Digital Equity Research Center at the Metropolitan New York Library Council and an associate professor and director of the Community Informatics Lab in the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. He has been a Google Policy Fellow and an adjunct research fellow with New America’s Open Technology Institute, a senior advisor with the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a senior fellow with the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and a faculty associate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.