Liam Young

Co-Director (School of Journalism and Communication); Associate Professor and Program Head (Communication and Media Studies)

Liam Young is Co-Director of the School of Journalism and Communication, Associate Professor, and Program Head of Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University. His teaching and scholarship span media theory and cultural techniques, histories of data and information, infrastructure studies and internet studies. 

Young’s research examines how societies organize knowledge, communication and infrastructure across time and space. Current projects include Salt Studies: Techniques of Taste and Time, which explores global histories of salt as a medium of culture and civilization, and All In: Gambling, Speculation, and the Financialization of Sport, which investigates the relationship between sports gambling, datafication and financialization. 

Young’s work explores a wide range of topics, including media history and theory, information systems, logistical infrastructures, popular culture and the social dimensions of communication technologies. His scholarship has also examined subjects ranging from state bureaucracies and bookkeeping systems to ports, barcodes, fisheries and cultural techniques of knowledge organizations. 

As a researcher and educator, Young is particularly interested in questions of epistemology and infrastructure and how communication systems shape social and cultural life. He also supervises graduate students working in media studies, internet studies, platform studies and related fields.