Appointment of Dr Gillian Youngs to the post of Professor of Digital Economy and Academic Director of the Institute of Advanced Broadcasting
Announcement:
Gillian Youngs
has a combined media, business and academic background. She was one of
the earliest UK researchers of digital developments a decade ago when
based in Hong Kong and teaching at Syracuse University’s (US) centre
there. Her position in media and communications at Leicester University
that followed focused substantially on PhD supervision and postgraduate
teaching including the development of the MA Globalization and
Communications, one of the first postgraduate courses to examine
information and communications technologies (ICTs) and economic,
political and social transformations related to them.
Her early academic research was on globalization and her co-edited collection, Globalization: Theory and Practice
(Continuum), one of the first critical volumes on the topic in 1996,
was recently published in a substantially revised third edition. She
has published extensively in major international journals, edited
collections and policy related documents including for UNESCO and in the
NGO sector nationally and internationally. She sees herself as an
applied theorist and as an international political economist adopts a
socio-technical approach to ICTs focused on the dynamic relationship
between their functions and their differentiated social and human
interfaces.
Her research monograph Global Political Economy in the Information Age: Power and Inequality
(Routledge, 2007) assessed ICT developments globally including in
relation to China and India as well as the least developed parts of the
world. All her academic work on globalization and ICTs has featured a
central focus on questions of inequality and empowerment including as
they relate to women and this has been the basis of much of her policy
related work nationally and internationally.
Her
interest in technology goes back to her initial journalistic career
where she latterly specialized in civil aviation, as well as her
independent communications consultancy work that followed including for
major clients such as BAA plc and Rediffusion Simulation. She
is interested in innovation and entrepreneurialism and how the specific
nature of ICTs is transforming them. She views understandings of
‘creative industries’ as long overdue for expansion to see how ICTs can
contribute to new forms of inclusive economic regeneration. The research
monograph she is currently working on for Routledge, Virtual Globalization: Digital Economy, addresses related areas.
She
has recently been awarded an ESRC research seminar series grant
(2011-2013) on the theme of ‘Digital Policy: Connectivity, Creativity
and Rights’ in collaboration with colleagues in the Department of Media
and Communication, University of Leicester, the Oxford Internet Institute, and Institute of Communications, University of Leeds.
Gillian will take up her post on 1 October 2010.
Professor Stephen Hagen
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic)