Kenzie Burchell


Assistant Professor

Kenzie Burchell

Assistant Professor
  • Office: BL 632, 649

Kenzie Burchell is a media sociologist who for over a decade has been examining contemporary contexts of communication overload and how it relates to the production of uncertainty and the perceived scarcity of time.  From the management of everyday interpersonal media practices to professional conventions of journalistic reporting on protest, humanitarian crisis, and war, Kenzie’s distinct research agendas across communication and journalism studies speak to his wider political economic engagement with how surveillance practices and platform technologies impact everyday life and political processes.

Kenzie is the Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Toronto, having joined the Department of Arts, Culture and Media (UTSC) and the Faculty of Information (iSchool) in 2014.  In 2020, Kenzie joined the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CERES) at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy as an associate graduate faculty member.  Prior to joining University of Toronto, Professor Burchell was the Research Associate of European Media Studies at the University of Manchester and has continued his collaboration with Manchester’s faculty and researchers in Russian and East European Studies as the Toronto lead of a joint institutional research cluster between the two institutions.  Kenzie holds degrees from McGill University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Goldsmiths – University of London where he completed his PhD in Media and Communications while also serving as Lecturer and Visiting Tutor.

Between 2019-2020, Kenzie Burchell was the JHI-UTSC Early Career Digital Humanities Fellow for his ongoing project “Making Responsible Reporting Practices Visible: Humanitarian Crisis, Global Media, and the War in Syria”.  His recent academic endeavours have been awarded support from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Connaught Fund, the Jackman Humanities Institute, and the Equality and Diversity in the Arts Initiative of University of Toronto.

Outside of academia, Kenzie has held roles with the BBC World Service, the BBC Russian Service, the UK Cabinet Office, and international press freedom organization Reporters Sans Frontières.  As a photographer, Kenzie’s work has been exhibited internationally at the Dublin Science Gallery, London Fashion Week, the Russian Polytechnic Museum, and the 54th Venice Biennale as well as other venues in the UK, Italy, and Japan.

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