Born in Philadelphia, Dugan lived in California for 20 years working as a Silicon Valley computer geek. He got bored with that and decided to go back to school. He has received his PhD in Anthropology from Tulane University and is a Learning Technologies Developer at Loyola University.

His side interests include social conflicts between modernity and tradition, including how they manifest in the Creation-Evolution debate and censorship attempts in the present-day U.S.