Professor Cogburn is an expert in global information and communication technology (ICT) policy and in the use of ICTs for socio-economic development. He is currently an assistant professor of Information and African Studies at the University of Michigan School of Information and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies. Dr. Cogburn also chairs the faculty advisory committee for the South Africa Initiatives Office at the University. He serves on advisory boards for the UM Center for Research on Learning & Teaching, and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program. In addition, Dr. Cogburn is a visiting professor at the School of International Service at American University and also at the Graduate School of Management at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He is the former executive director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission - Africa, and has served as advisor to several government agencies and international organizations including the South African Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of Communications, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research; Canadian International Development Research Center; Commonwealth IT Network; United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa; the International Telecommunication Union, and the World Bank. In these various roles, Dr. Cogburn helped to negotiate a science and technology agreement between South Africa and Egypt, served on the High-Level Working Group of the Economic Commission for Africa tasked with developing the African Information Society Initiative, and served as a senior member of the program committee to plan the historic G7 Information Society and Development Conference, held in South Africa. 

He has published several articles, book chapters, and edited books on the political economy of globalization, the information economy, electronic commerce, international regime formation and governance of the Global Information Society. He has also written on geographically distributed, collaborative learning, and community information centers. Prof. Cogburn is currently finishing a book manuscript entitled "The Embedded South African State: Understanding the Impact of Globalization and State-Society Networks on Telecommunications and Information Society Development." 

Dr. Cogburn has served as principal investigator on research grants from a number of organizations including, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Microsoft Research, UNESCO, USIA. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science (International Relations, Political Economy) from Howard University, and was a W.K. Kellogg doctoral fellow at the Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center.