Gillian Youngs has held Professorial and Visiting Scholar positions in the UK, USA and Hong Kong. She is currently a Visiting Professor at University of Greenwich, UK, and an Honorary Professor at University of Lincoln, UK. She co-founded International Feminist Journal of Politics in 1999. Her books are: International Relations in a Global Age (Polity, 1999), Global Political Economy in the Information Age (Routledge, 2007) and Feminist International Relations Through a Technospatial Lens (Routledge, 2025); edited volumes Political Economy, Power and the Body (Macmillan, 2000) and Digital World: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights (Routledge, 2013); three editions of the co-edited volume Globalization: Theory and Practice (3rd ed., Continuum, 2008).

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Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?

Those informed by the core focus and trajectories of the discipline of international relations that advance its interdisciplinary strengths to address patterns of continuity and change in the contemporary world and global economy. Recent examples include: the third edition of Marianne Marchand and Anne Sisson Runyan’s edited collection Gender and Global Restructurings including examination of shifts in the sites of global restructuring and resistances to it, and James Mittelman’s Runaway Capitalism exploring ‘material and ideational’ developments. I have always aimed to position my research, collaborative work and funded projects towards fresh interdisciplinary perspectives as well as my teaching and course development across globalization, digital economy and feminist international relations.

How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

My academic work has been mainly located in the sub-field of international (global) political economy explicitly because it is centrally oriented towards understanding change. A wide range of scholars in this sub-field, including Susan Strange, have informed my research and thinking from the outset, because they provide the frameworks and perspectives relevant to my focus on the dynamics of power, inequality and empowerment. Importantly, these frameworks connect transformations across political and economic spheres.

The biggest shift in this area related to my work has been towards an increasingly applied agenda linking research and practice, including in different aspects of feminist activism, innovation, and entrepreneurship. An interest in how empowerment happens and can be supported is a common thread across this work. Learning by doing is a feature of these areas of practice as well as knowledge exchange and practice-sharing, and how these can inform different levels of policy.

Can you explain what you mean by ‘technological determinism’ and how it has shaped our understanding of international relations?

My new book Feminist International Relations Through a Technospatial Lens introduces my current research in this area but its sociotechnical approach goes right back to an early essay published in 1997 as part of a collection Technology, Culture and Competitiveness from a funded project on technology and the global political economy. As this research journey started, I began to connect insights from my earlier professional life in media and communications and the high-tech sector with my interests in power and inequality.

I analyse technological determinism from holistic macro and micro perspectives and the ways in which it has steered modernity through the given and unquestioned role of technological innovation as the........

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