Liam Cole Young
Co-Director, School of Journalism and Communication; Associate Professor and Program Head, Communication and Media Studies
| Building: | Richcraft Hall, Room 4317 |
| Department: | |
| Degrees: | B.A. History, Calgary; B.A. International Relations, Calgary; M.A. Popular Culture, Brock; Ph.D. Media Studies, Western |
Biography
I currently serve as Program Head of COMS and Co-Director of the School of Journalism and Communication. See this welcome message for more on my work in this role.
My scholarship and teaching span four overlapping areas: media theory and cultural techniques, histories of data and information, infrastructure studies, and internet studies.
I am presently working on two major projects:
- traces global histories of salt and positions this seemingly banal substance as a medium of culture and civilization.
- situates the recent legalization and mainstreaming of sports gambling within longer histories of datafication, financialization, and speculation.
Generally, I work within what is sometimes called the 鈥渃ivilizational鈥� stream of media theory, especially its Canadian and German variants, typified by Innis, McLuhan, Benjamin, and Kittler (among others).
The question of how human societies hold together across time and space animates my teaching and research across a range of topics鈥攆rom early modern to 20th century and charts; from of ports, shipping containers, and barcodes to the history and rise of ; from the cod fisheries and of the 17th and 18th centuries to and as media of culture. In each case, I am interested primarily in questions of epistemology (how we know about these things) and infrastructure (how they are built into and operate in the world). My first book, (Amsterdam University Press, 2017; Open Access) explored such themes by tracing the list as a cultural technique of administration and imagination.
The transatlantic nature of my work has led to visiting positions at the at the Bauhaus-Universit盲t Weimar, Germany (2018) and the Department of at Aarhus University, Denmark (2021).
I am available to supervise graduate students who are interested in sports, popular culture, platform and internet studies, media history and theory, histories of data and information, and recent debates in infrastructure studies.
Selected Publications
Books
Young, Liam C. 2017. . Amsterdam University Press.
Reviews: (September 2020), Ian Reilly; 14.3 (Fall 2018), Rob Coley; (May 2018), Jan Baetens; (December 2017), Marianne Koob
Articles and Chapters
Young, Liam C. 2024. 鈥�.鈥� Cultural Politics 20, no 1.听
Young, Liam C. 2022. 鈥�.鈥� In Interrogating Datafication: Towards a Praxeology of Data. Edited by Marcus Burkhardt, Daniela van Geenen, Carolin Gerlitz, Sam Hind, Timo Kaerlein, Danny L盲mmerhirt, Axel Volmar. transcript Verlag.
Young, Liam C., Hannah Dick and Chris Russill. 2021. 鈥溾�� and 鈥�.鈥� Media Theory 5.2.
Young, Liam C. 2021. 鈥淐olonization鈥檚 Logistical Media: The Ship and the Document.鈥� In . Edited by Matthew Hockenberry, Nicole Starosielski and Susan Zieger. Durham NC: Duke University Press.
Young, Liam C. 2020. 鈥�.鈥� Theory, Culture and Society. 37, no. 6.
Young, Liam C. 2020. 鈥�.鈥� Amodern 10: Technique.
Young, Liam C. 2019. 鈥溾�� Canadian Journal of Communication (special Issue on 鈥淢any McLuhans鈥�).
Young, Liam C. and Ira Wagman. 2019. 鈥溾��. Imaginations 10, no. 2.
Young, Liam C. 2017. 鈥� Cultural Politics 13, no. 2.
Young, Liam C. 2015. 鈥�.鈥� M/C Journal 18, no. 2 (Feature article in special issue on 鈥楾echnique鈥�)
Commentary
Young, Liam C. 2026. “”听The Conversation Canada.听18 February.
Young, Liam C. 2023. 鈥�.鈥� The Conversation Canada. 17 May.