John P. Robinson is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Americans' Use of Time Project as well as Director of the the Internet Scholars Program. He is primarily interested in the study of time and is co-author of several books dealing with the use of time and the quality of life, including Time for Life (with G. Godbey, Penn State Press, 1999), The Rhythm of Everyday Life: How Soviet and American Citizens Use Time (Westview, 1988) and How Americans Use Time (Praeger, 1977).

Professor Robinson has also published widely on the social implications of the Internet, and was a contributor on the seminal ARS piece dealing with the study of the Internet (DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman, and Robinson, 2001, “Social Implication of the Internet” ARS). This work, undertaken under the auspices of a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, has also led to the creation of a website, www.webuse.umd.edu, which contains a wide variety of internet related data as well as an online statistical tool for analysis of the data (the award winning SDA program created at UC Berkeley). Professor Robinson also co-founded, along with Stanford Professor Norman Nie, a journal, jointly published with the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, entitled IT and Society (www.itandsociety.org), which publishes up-to date Internet research. In addition, over the past three years Professor Robinson has conducted an annual summer Webshop, where 40-50 top graduate students are brought into College Park and given the opportunity to interact with leading Internet scholars and researchers.