Gillian Youngs

Co-Chair of the Design Commission Inquiry: Design and the Digital Revolution

Gillian Youngs is Professor of Digital Economy at the University of Brighton Faculty of Arts and has been researching diverse aspects of the internet’s impact on society and economy for 15 years developing out of her early focus on globalisation. She has given invited keynote and guest papers internationally in the US, China, South Korea, Turkey, Hungary, Germany, Holland, Spain, Austria, Tanzania, and presented over 70 conference and workshop papers at national and international conferences. The third edition of her co-edited book Globalization: Theory and Practice (New York: Continuum) was published in 2008 having been one of the first critical collections on the subject in 1996. Her research monograph Global Political Economy in the Information Age: Power and Inequalitywas published by Routledge in 2007 and she is currently working on a volume on Virtual Globalization for Routledge.

Gillian has had a portfolio career in journalism, independent communications consultancy, and for the last 20 years full-time in academia. She has worked in high tech areas throughout her career including the civil aviation, airport and simulation sectors. This informs her focus on socio-technical transformations – in other words how social and technological processes interact to produce change.

Gillian is an applied theorist and is actively engaged in knowledge exchange, business and policy related processes, including through the Knowledge Transfer Networks of the UK’s innovation agency the Technology Strategy Board.