Department
Email
Website
https://keanbirch.net/
Education
MA (Hons) Sociology (University of Edinburgh, UK), MSc in Technology Studies (University of Edinburgh, UK), PhD Planning (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
My Research
I'm an interdisciplinary social scientist who is interested in the changing political economy of science, technology, and innovation. I draw from science & technology studies, economic sociology, political economy, and economic geography in my research. Most of my recent empirical work focuses on the digital economy, especially the transformation of digital personal data into a political-economic asset and the role of large ‘tech’ firms in this process. Analytically, I'm particularly interested in processes of assetization and rentiership; that is, how things are turned into assets from which people can extract economic rents. Alongside these interests, I also pursue research on artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies, and have undertaken research in the past on biotechnology, biofuels, and low-carbon technologies. Current funded projects include:
- Governance & political economy of artificial intelligence (Ontario Research Chair)
- Between economy and democracy: Reorganizing research evaluation through metadata in the digital era (Open Research Area 8)
- Defining and measuring the sustainable economic and social value of data in Africa (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)
- Digital data value paradox: An empirical investigation of personal data valuation (SSHRC)
More grandly, I’m interested in developing a broader analysis of our societies and economies centred on the idea that we’re entering a ‘post-innovation condition’ in which parasitic forms of innovation are derailing our economies. Parasitic innovation frames our particular historical moment in the recurrent long-waves of techno-economic change, and I’m theorizing our current techno-economic juncture as the ‘scam-stage of capitalism’.
My major contribution to STS and other debates to date is the book Assetization: Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism, co-edited with Fabian Muniesa and published open access by MIT Press. I also have a new book out called Data Enclaves published by Palgrave Macmillan, which deals with the increasing centrality of digital personal data to our economies, especially its asset form and its role in new forms of ‘parasitic’ innovation that undermines our social infrastructure, our markets and competition, and our social and political lives.
About me
I'm the Director of the Institute for Technoscience & Society, Ontario Research Chair in Science Policy, and a Professor in the Science & Technology Studies Graduate Program and Department of Science, Technology & Society at York University, Toronto. I've been a Visiting Scholar at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, and the Munich Center for Technology & Society, Technical University Munich, Germany.
I'm currently the Co-Editor of the leading international science & technology studies journal Science as Culture, published by Taylor and Francis, and Founder and Series Editor of the Technoscience & Society Book Series at University of Toronto Press. I also sit on the Editorial Boards of Science, Technology & Human Values, Social Epistemology, IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, Progress in Economic Geography, Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology, and Digital.
Personal website: https://keanbirch.net/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wKYYL5MAAAAJ&hl=en
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/keanbirch.bsky.social