Robert Cummings serves as Executive Director of Academic Innovation and Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi. In 2006 he earned a PhD in English from the University of Georgia, with a focus on the connections between rhetoric, composition, and digital technology. His first book was the co-edited volume Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom with Matt Barton, (U of Michigan P digitalculturebooks: 2008). In the following year he authored Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia (Vanderbilt UP, 2009), which won the 2009 MLA Mina Shaughnessy award. More recently he has won grants to promote Open Educational Resources and online composition. Similarly, he has served Wikipedia community, Wikimedia Foundation, and Wiki Ed Foundation as a frequent consultant on matters pertaining to higher education. His recent projects have included launching the open access journal Wiki Studies and researching open educational practices.

Education 
Ph.D. English, University of Georgia, 2006
M.A. English, University of Mississippi, 1999
B.A. English, University of Tennessee, 1990