Colin Agur
206 Church St SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Colin Agur is Associate Professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, where his research focuses on mobile communication, infrastructure, platforms, digital economies, governance, and networked technologies. His work examines how communication systems evolve into infrastructural environments that organize social, economic, and political life.
His scholarship spans media history, mobile communication, infrastructure studies, platform studies, and political economy, with particular attention to mobile networks, digital coordination, financialized communication systems, and everyday technological life. His previous research has examined topics including mobile money and infrastructural transformation, communication infrastructures and empire, platforms and governance, digital games and networked participation, and speculative digital economies. Across these projects, a consistent concern has been the relationship between communication networks and broader systems of coordination, mobility, exchange, and institutional organization.
Agur’s work has appeared in journals such as New Media & Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Mobile Media & Communication, Social Media + Society, and Information & Culture. He co-editor of the Education & Social Media: Toward a Digital Future (MIT Press, 2016). At the International Communication Association, he was Chair of the Mobile Communication Division and a member of ICA’s Board of Directors. He has held affiliations and fellowships at Columbia University, Yale University, the Institute for Advanced Study (University of Minnesota), and the Institute on the Environment (University of Minnesota). His interdisciplinary approach combines media history, infrastructure studies, political economy, and global mobile communication research.
Educational Background
- PhD: Communications, Columbia University, 2014
- MPhil: Communications, Columbia University, 2013
- MA: International Political Economy, University of Warwick, 2006
- BA: Political Science, University of Alberta, 2002
Specialties
- emerging media studies
- mobile communication
- political economy of media
- digital games
- digital education