Blog Posts
I irregularly write blogs or post about my work and other matters, which you can can find here
Publications
If you’re interested in reading more about my work then you can find my academic and other writings here
About Me
My name’s Kean Birch. I’m the Ontario Research Chair in Science Policy and Professor in the Department of Science, Technology & Society and the Graduate Program in Science & Technology Studies at York University, Canada. I was also Director of the Institute for Technoscience & Society at York University between 2022 and 2025.
I’m really interested in how ‘things’ – ranging from knowledge to digital data – are turned into assets; that is, into techno-economic objects whose value is often derived from the capitalization of future revenue streams. A key dimensions to this assetization process is the search for ‘durable economic rents’, so I’m also interested in diverse forms of rentiership, understood as a social process and practice.
In my recent research, I have started to focus on the construction and production of digital assets and digital ledger technologies and their role in financial markets, especially in relation to tokenization and payment systems.
Although I now mainly focus on digital, data, and AI technologies, in the past I’ve done research on biotechnology, biofuels, infrastructure, and low-carbon technologies.
Latest posts
- CfP: What has Driven Our Elites Insane? WorkshopWhat Has Driven Our Elites Insane? 10-11th December 2026 @ York University, Toronto, Canada Workshop Organizers Kean Birch, York University, Canada David Tyfield, Lancaster University, UK Abstract Submission Please submit your paper proposal to both the organizers by Friday 4 September 2026. Proposal abstracts should be 300-500 words. Emails: kean@yorku.ca and d.tyfield@lancaster.ac.uk Funding Some funds will be available to support accommodation and travel costs of participants; please specify if you need support at the end of your abstract. Call for Papers “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” Our techno-financial elites (Harrington 2024; Cohen 2025; Farkas and Mondon… Read More »CfP: What has Driven Our Elites Insane? Workshop
- Launch of New Institute!I’m Director of a new research centre at York University called the Institute for Technoscience & Society. Check out the recently launched website! “Our aim is to build a global hub of critical and interdisciplinary research and knowledge mobilization on the relationship between technoscience and society, especially the configuration of social power underpinning scientific claims, medical practices, emerging technologies, and sites of innovation. York has one of the largest concentrations of and internationally renowned experts working on these important societal issues and the ITS aims to support these researchers as they promote socially responsible and inclusive technoscience”. Institute for Technoscience… Read More »Launch of New Institute!
- New special issue: New Frontiers of Techno-economic RentiershipNew Frontiers of Techno-Economic Rentiership in Competition & Change “In this guest introduction, we explore emerging critiques at the frontiers of techno-economic rentiership. Rentiership is a process entailing political-economic and technological (i.e. techno-economic) relations, formations, practices, and justifications underpinning the ownership and/or control of assets, which enable the capture of future revenue streams (i.e. what we call rents). Conceptually, in this context, rentiership permits us to analyse the increasingly diverse techno-economic dimensions of those future revenue streams, rather than being a normative term for identifying ‘good’ or ‘bad’ forms of revenue (i.e. profit vs. rent)….” ‘Introduction’ by Kean Birch, Callum… Read More »New special issue: New Frontiers of Techno-economic Rentiership