October 28-29, 2021
Online

Register here!

About the Event

The platform economy runs on data– much of it drawn from work processes, worker bodies, and work-based interactions. Yet workers themselves have often been severed from accessing what becomes proprietary and commercial data. In response, workers, researchers, activists, and organisers have come together to design and develop various data-driven interventions and tools with the explicit aim of enabling workers to study, understand, resist, and reformulate these working conditions. To date, these projects have not yet been put in conversation so that new audiences, including trade unions and worker coops, may learn best practices, develop models for their own inquiry, or learn from project failures. Our event aims to generate that conversation.

Over two days, we will showcase worker-led data projects, ranging from the creation of apps, tools, and software to the discussions of the ethical, technical, and legal challenges of working with or organising through worker data. Four themes inform the workshop:

• Stories of the Build: The Who, What, and Why of the Tool

• Ethical and Technical Challenges of Accessing Worker Data

• Legal Concerns and Challenges of Building with Worker Data

• Building Solidarity Through Data-Driven Organising: Does it work?

Accessibility

Thanks to our STUC partners, all speaking events will be accompanied by signers providing real-time British Sign Language translation.

Please keep in mind our code of conduct.

Schedule

All times B.S.T.

Thursday

1:00-1:15pm

Speaker: Dr. Karen Gregory (University of Edinburgh)

1:15-2:30

Chair: Paola Tubaro (CNRS and University of Paris-Saclay)

  • Wilneida Negrón - Coworker.Org
  • Drew Ambrogi - Coworker.Org
  • Louise Patel - The Time Project, Share My Telly Job (SMTJ)
  • Adolfo Fuentes - Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
  • Valentina Salvatierra - Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
2:30-2:45Break
2:45-4:00

Chair: Oliver Bates (Lancaster University)

  • Saiph Savage - Northeastern University, Civic AI Lab
  • Angelika Strohmayer - Northumbria University
  • Josh Hughes - Trilateral Research
  • Jenny Andrew - CSP Union & DAMA UK
  • Danny Spitzberg - Turning Basin Labs
  • Rich Gall - UTAW
  • Adrian Friday - Lancaster University
4:00-4:15Break
4:15-5:30

Chair: Carlos Alvarez (Northumbria University)

  • Hays Witt - Driver’s Seat
  • Funda Ustek-Splida - Oxford Internet Institute, Fair Work Project
  • Jeff Vize - Georgia Fair Labour Platform
  • Martijn Arets - GigCV
  • Lyle Canceko - The Workers Lab
5.30-5.45Break
5:45-6:45

Speaker: Christina Colclough, Founder of The Why Not Lab

Friday

11:45am-12:00pm

Speaker: Dr. Karen Gregory (University of Edinburgh)

12:00-1:15

Chair: Mike Saunders (Scottish Tech Workers)

  • Felipe Bonel - Contrate Quem Luta
  • Hannah Johnston - Northeastern University
  • Boyan Karabaliev - Edinburgh Workers Observatory
  • Cailean Gallagher - Edinburgh Workers Observatory, STUC
  • Nathan Freitas - WeClock
1:15-1:30Break
1:30-2:45

Chair: Dr. Wenlong Li (University of Birmingham)

  • Lillian Edwards - Newcastle University
  • James Farrar - Worker Info Exchange
  • Joanna Bronowicka - Centre For Internet & Human Rights
  • Janis Wong - University of St Andrews (CRISP)
  • Aislinn Kelly-Lyth - Law, University of Oxford
2:45-3:00Break
3:00-4:15

Chair: Kate McCurdy (University of Edinburgh)

  • Caroline Sinders - Convocation Design + Research
  • Joel Bray - Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee
  • Sylvia Morse - Up & Go Cooperative
  • Cosmin Popan - Manchester Metropolitan University
  • José Sherwood González - Manchester Metropolitan University
4:15-4:30Break
4:30-5:45

Chair: Cailean Gallagher (Workers Observatory, STUC)

  • Andrew Pakes - Prospect Union
  • Sebastiaan Kennes - United Freelancers Belgium
  • Lina Dencik - Cardiff University, Data Justice Lab
  • Miranda Hall - New Economics Foundation
  • Tanja Vicas - Digital Danube Network
5:45-6:00Break
6:00-6:45

Speaker: Roz Foyer, General Secretary STUC

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Keynote Speakers

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Dr. Christina
Colclough
Founder of The Why Not Lab

Keynote:

Thursday 5:45-6:45

Regarded as a thought leader on the future of work(ers) and the politics of digital technology, Dr. Christina J. Colclough is an advocate for the workers’ voice. She is the founder of the Why Not Lab - a boutique value-driven consultancy that puts workers at the centre of digital change. In this capacity, Christina works with unions, interest organisations and governments across the world on issues such as AI governance, workers' data rights and human rights, and the development of responsible digital technology. Christina co-developed WeClock – an open-source privacy-preserving app to empower workers and unions through the responsible collection and analysis of work-related data. Christina is included in the all-time Hall of Fame of the world's most brilliant women in AI Ethics and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) and Advisory Board member of Carnegie Council's new program: AI and Equality Initiative. She is a member of the OECD One AI Expert Group, and is affiliated to FAOS, Copenhagen University.

Picture of Roz Foyer
Roz
Foyer
General Secretary STUC

Keynote:

Friday 6:00-6:45

Roz Foyer is the STUC’s General Secretary. She has over twenty-five years’ experience in the trade union movement. Roz began as a workplace activist in the Benefits Agency. After leading a successful campaign against support services privatisation, she was recruited by the printer workers union as a trainee organiser, before gaining prominence in the Scottish movement as an Assistant Secretary at the STUC working on a range of equalities and social justice campaigns. She went on to become a National Officer with the Transport and General Workers Union, later moving into Unite’s National Organising Department. She excelled as a strategist who delivered a series of successful membership campaigns. Her role as General Secretary of the STUC involves representing over half a million trade unionists in Scotland, co-ordinating, developing and articulating the views and policies of the trade union movement.

Panelists

Martijn
Arets
GigCV

Panel:
Thursday 4:15-5:30

Project Description


Martijn Arets is an international expert and thinker in the field of emergence and development of the platform economy. Since 2012 Martijn is traveling the world to (so far) talk to 500+ entrepreneurs, experts and other stakeholders in 16 countries behind the upcoming platform economy. To find out what is really happening, who the stakeholders are, what the main dilemmas are and to explore the conditions under which platforms can contribute to a more inclusive society. As a bridge builder and independent professional outsider, he uses these insights and this network to get stakeholders like trade unions, government institutions, platforms and academics together to address relevant issues in a constructive way. Martijn shares his vision in his newsletters, in the media, via public speaking and in his (Dutch) book ‘Platformrevolutie’.

Martijn advices corporations, national and local governments and other institutions. He has shared his story and thoughts via blogs, his newsletter and during several of hundreds of keynotes around the world: from TEDx in Greece to the Crowdsourcing Week Arctic Circle. Martijn runs his own advisory company Professional Outsider Consultancy and is the founder of GigCV: an open standard for platforms to share data on reputation and transaction with gigworkers.

Drew
Ambrogi
Coworker

Panel:
Thursday 1:15-2:30

Project Description


Drew Ambrogi serves as Coworker’s Digital Director, supporting worker-led online campaigns to support workers’ efforts to build power in the workplace. Drew maintains and develops Coworker’s online platform and digital tools to create innovative new approaches to workplace organizing and worker-based research. Before joining the team in 2019, Drew worked as a digital strategist at a national racial justice organization, where he served as President of their staff union, and on the side as a communications consultant for grassroots community organizations. Drew currently lives and works in Washington, DC.

Dr. Jenny
Andrew
CSP Union & DAMA UK

Panel:
Thursday 2:45-4:00


Jenny Andrew is Head of Data for the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, and a board member at DAMA UK – the UK chapter of the international Data Management Association. She has 20 years’ experience in whole-lifecycle data science, with a PhD in satellite oceanography, and 10 years as a scientific data manager and ultimately data architect, for the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC). Her development of data management approaches for environmental research has given her a deep understanding of the interactions between the ethical and technical dimensions of data management, from individual concerns to the global-scale collective interest, and from clear-cut points of law to abstract matters of scientific integrity.

Jenny served as a union rep for the Natural Environment Research Council, inserting her professional skillset into the organising and negotiating activity of her union branch. She has spent the last five years working full time for trade unions, and advocating for stronger data capabilities across the movement. The Head of Data role marks the CSP’s recognition of data as material infrastructure, and of its professional management as a core capability for the digital age.

Joel
Bray
Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee

Panel:
Friday 3:00-4:15

Project Description


Joel Bray (they/them) has served as a volunteer Data Team Lead with EWOC since May 2020, overseeing the digital technology and data infrastructure that staff and organizers use to do workplace organizing in a remote, digital landscape.

Felipe
Bonel
Contrate Quem Luta

Panel:
Friday 12:00-1:15


Felipe Bonel is a technology professional who specializes in the development of digital products, conversational interfaces and artificial intelligence – today acting as a Product Manager at SumUp. Also, he has been active in the MTST (social housing movement in Brazil) for four years. There, he is one of the coordinators of the movement’s Technology Nucleus, where projects are developed for the technical strengthening of social struggles, in addition to training political cadres capable of developing software.

Joanna
Bronowicka
Centre For Internet & Human Rights

Panel:
Friday 1:30-2:45


Joanna Bronowicka is a Polish sociologist and political activist living in Berlin. She works as a researcher at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt Oder where she previously directed the Centre for Internet and Human Rights. Her interests cut through disciplinary and national borders – she combines sociology, law and political science to study the impacts of digitisation and migration on labour relations and politics. She designed the study program for the European New School for Digital Studies at Viadrina and she contributed to the development of digital strategies at the Ministry of Digital Affairs in Poland. She also previously worked at migration NGOs in Warsaw, Paris, and Boston. Joanna has a B.A degree in social studies from Harvard University; she also studied international relations and philosophy in Paris and public policy and administration in Warsaw. She is a member of the new left-wing party in Poland called RAZEM and DiEM25 - she was a candidate for the Polish and European parliaments in 2015 and 2019.

Lyle
Canceko
The Workers Lab

Panel:
Thursday 4:15-5:30

Dr. Lina
Dencik
Cardiff University, Data Justice Lab

Panel:
Friday 4:30-5:45


Lina Dencik is Professor in Digital Communication and Society at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture and Co-Director of the Data Justice Lab. She has published widely on digital media, resistance and the politics of data and is currently Principal Investigator of the DATAJUSTICE project funded by an ERC Starting Grant. Her most recent publications include Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society (with Arne Hintz and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Polity, 2018) and The Media Manifesto (with Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman and Justin Schlosberg, Polity, 2020).

Dr. Lillian
Edwards
Newcastle University

Panel:
Friday 1:30-2:45


Lilian Edwards is a leading academic in the field of Internet law. She has taught information technology law, e-commerce law, privacy law and Internet law at undergraduate and postgraduate level since 1996 and been involved with law and artificial intelligence (AI) since 1985.

She worked at the University of Strathclyde from 1986–1988 and the University of Edinburgh from 1989 to 2006. She became Chair of Internet Law at the University of Southampton from 2006–2008, and then Professor of Internet Law at the University of Sheffield until late 2010, when she returned to Scotland to become Professor of E-Governance at the University of Strathclyde, while retaining close links with the renamed SCRIPT (AHRC Centre) at the University of Edinburgh. She resigned from that role in 2018 to take up a new Chair in Law, Innovation and Society at Newcastle University. She also has close links with the Oxford Internet Institute.

She is the editor and major author of Law, Policy and the Internet, one of the leading textbooks in the field of Internet law (Hart, 2018). She won the Future of Privacy Forum award in 2019 for best paper (“Slave to the Algorithm” with Michael Veale) and the award for best non-technical paper at FAccT* in 2020, on automated hiring. In 2004 she won the Barbara Wellberry Memorial Prize in 2004 for work on online privacy where she invented the notion of data trusts, a concept which ten years later has been proposed in EU legislation. She is a partner in the Horizon Digital Economy Hub at Nottingham, the lead for the Alan Turing Institute on Law and AI, and a fellow of the Institute for the Future of Work. At Newcastle, she is the theme lead in the data NUCore for the Regulation of Data. She currently holds grants from the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust. Edwards has consulted for inter alia the EU Commission, the OECD, and WIPO.

Edwards co-chairs GikII, an annual series of international workshops on the intersections between law, technology and popular culture.

James
Farrar
Worker Info Exchange

Panel:
Friday 1:30-2:45


James Farrar is founder & director of Worker Info Exchange. After leaving a career in tech James became in activist for worker rights in the gig economy. Together with Yaseen Aslam, he is the lead claimant in the landmark worker rights case against Uber recently decided in favour of workers by the UK Supreme Court. James founded Worker Info Exchange having realized that surveillance and hidden unfair algorithmic management would be the next stage in the battle for worker rights in the gig economy.

Nathan
Freitas
WeClock

Panel:
Friday 12:00-1:15

Project Description

Dr. Adrian
Friday
Lancaster University

Panel:
Thursday 2:45-4:00


Adrian Friday is Professor of Computing and Sustainability at Lancaster University, UK. His work focuses on how ubiquitous systems, data and empirical studies reveal the externality and impacts of everyday life, and offer new and more sustainable ways of doing. He has led a series of collaborative and multidisciplinary research projects exploring energy use in the home, thermal comfort, sustainable food shopping, and last-mile logistics. His latest work focuses on environmental and social justice for gig economy, and a significant new programme exploring time series statistics, HCI & human geography and machine learning might provide energy insights toward net zero.

Adolfo
Fuentes
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

Panel:
Thursday 1:15-2:30

Project Description


Adolfo holds a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from the Universidad de Chile, and recently completed the M.Res. in Economics at University College London. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student at University of Edinburgh’s School of Economics and an associate researcher at LEAS, the Laboratory of Surveys and Social Analysis, hosted by the School of Communications and Journalism at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile.

Richard
Gall
UTAW

Panel:
Thursday 2:45-4:00


Richard Gall is a writer based in the North East of England. He is a member of UTAW, the UK’s first tech worker union, and a masters student in Digital Society at the University of Edinburgh. He is also the producer and co-host of What We Talk About When We Talk About Tech, a podcast about storytelling in the tech industry.

Cailean
Gallagher
Edinburgh Workers Observatory

Panel:
Friday 12:00-1:15

Project Description


Cailean Gallagher is a union organiser and historian based in Edinburgh. He is co-ordinator of the Workers’ Observatory, and supports the development of unions by precarious workers with the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the campaign Better Than Zero. He is involved in a range of workers’ education projects, most recently the Sma Shot School and Falkland Workers School for young workers. Cailean is completing a PhD at the University of St Andrews on the political and economic ideas of Scottish Jacobite rebels, and is also researching the history of the gig economy and working time. He is co-author of Roch Winds: A Treacherous Guide to the State of Scotland.

Ricardo
Gonzalez
Fair Work Chile

Panel:
Thursday 1:15-2:30

Miranda
Hall
New Economics Foundation

Panel:
Friday 4:30-5:45


Miranda Hall is a researcher and activist interested in care, work and digital platforms.

At the New Economics Foundation, she researches digital transformations in the childcare sector which is understood not just as a marketplace but an essential social infrastructure, part-funded and delivered by the state. She is interested in how structural transformations in UK childcare provision (austerity, financialisation, workforce restructuring) shape and are shaped by digital platforms. She has also done research for Common Wealth on alternative models of public and cooperative ownership of digital infrastructure, with a focus on broadband.

Alongside her research, she helped set up a cooperative nursery in Deptford and has organised with the Nanny Solidarity Network to build the collective power of home-based childcare workers in the UK. She is interested in union-cooperative models and how digital technologies can support them. She has written for OpenDemocracy, Novara Media, Jacobin, the New Statesman, The Guardian, Huffington Post and Tribune.

Dr. Josh
Hughes
Trilateral Research

Panel:
Thursday 2:45-4:00


Dr. Joshua G. Hughes is a Research Analyst at Trilateral Research, acting as ethics coordinator across several EU-funded security technology projects where he manages compliance with ethical, data protection, human rights, and societal standards. He also develops design approaches to embed fulfilment of those standards during the design phase of new technologies. Josh is interested in the regulation of automation in security technologies, what roles human beings should play in relation to automating technologies, and how responsibility can be attributed for automated decision-making. Josh is also acting Data Protection Officer for the United Tech and Allied Workers branch of the Communications Workers Union.

Dr. Hannah
Johnston
Northeastern University

Panel:
Friday 12:00-1:15

Project Description


Hannah Johnston is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts where she researches algorithmic management in the platform economy. She is an affiliate of Fairwork (Oxford Internet Institute) and has worked for the International Labour Organization and with the European Trade Union Institute on projects related to working conditions and the platform economy. Her doctoral research (Queen’s University, Canada) focused on the New York City taxicab industry where she examined the collective organizing strategies used by drivers to improve working conditions, pay, and to strengthen regulation.

Boyan
Karabaliev
Edinburgh Workers Observatory

Panel:
Friday 12:00-1:15

Project Description


Boyan Karabaliev is a data scientist with experience working in the gig economy as a courier. He is interested in the development of tools that can empower workers to use their data to form a better collective understanding of their workspace. Boyan is one of the founding members of the Workers’ Observatory.

Aislinn
Kelly-Lyth
Oxford University Law

Panel:
Friday 1:30-2:45

Project Description


Aislinn Kelly-Lyth is a Researcher on Algorithmic Management at the University of Oxford. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, followed by an LLM at Harvard Law School as a Kennedy Scholar. Her research focuses on discriminatory algorithms, and her article Challenging Biased Hiring Algorithms was published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies in 2021. Aislinn has also taught at the London School of Economics.

Sebastiaan
Kennes
United Freelancers Belgium

Panel:
Friday 4:30-5:45


United Freelancers is the service of ACV-CSC in Belgium to support and represent freelancers and atypical workers in Belgium. Sebastiaan Kennes is working on developing new digital services to lower the threshold in supporting different types of platform workers, and in the first place those most vulnerable, being exploited due to a lack of information or connection. The development of these tools are done together with the workers, and has as aim to provide the platform workers with the correct information to make the best choices, and provide tools to better defend themselves against unfair and bad practices. Sebastiaan has been working himself as a meal delivery rider, and has been working for several years on sustainable innovation processes in different topics.

Sylvia
Morse
Up & Go Cooperative

Panel:
Friday 3:00-4:15


Sylvia Morse is the Assistant Director of the Cooperative Development Program at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park (CFL), where she is helping to implement initiatives to scale immigrant worker-owned cooperative businesses in New York City and nationally. Since September 2016, she has focused her time on the development of Up & Go (www.upandgo.coop), a cooperatively owned platform for booking home services from worker-owned businesses. Prior to joining CFL, Sylvia worked in housing policy and participatory planning. Sylvia is a lifelong New Yorker, and earned her Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from the City University of New York Hunter College.

Dr. Wilneida
Negrón
Coworker

Panel:
Thursday 1:15-2:30

Project Description


Wilneida Negrón most recently worked at the Ford Foundation, where she led cross-thematic area strategy development between the Gender, Race, Ethnic Justice, Technology and Society, Mission Investing, Future of Work(ers), and Civic Engagement Thematic areas, with a focus on helping labor movements deepen and leverage economic partnerships and movement-based partnerships. She is currently part of the Steering Committee Team for the Ford Foundation’s and Mozilla’s Public efforts to explore how to continue to foster the impact and sustainability of public interest technology projects in the US, Europe, and the Global South. She works on the frontlines of social change spaces, fostering new multi-issue and cross-sectoral approaches and solutions to our increasingly complex socio-technical world and serves as a strategic advisor, consultant, and capacity-builder to emerging and established national and global civil and human rights organizations.

She has a PhD in Comparative Politics, with a specialization in social and political implications of emerging technologies in East Asia and Latin America, a Masters in Public Administration, and an M.Phil. in International and Global Affairs. She is a lifelong fellow for Data & Society Research Institute and the Atlantic Fellows Program for Racial Equity.

Andrew
Pakes
Prospect Union

Panel:
Friday 4:30-5:45


Andrew is deputy general secretary and research director at Prospect Union in the UK representing over 152,000 members across tech, specialist, engineering and professional roles. He leads Prospect’s work around tech, AI, data rights and the future of work.

His work aims to empower workers around digital change and the implications on how technology is transforming the ways people are managed and work, including on mental health, the right to disconnect and surveillance. He is a member of the OECD AI expert group in implementing Trustworthy AI and the UK Trade Union Congress AI Working Group. A strong advocate of Equality Diversity and Inclusion approaches to work, Andrew also serves as secretary to Stonewall, Europe’s largest LGBT+ equalities charity.

Louise
Patel
The Time Project/Share My Telly Job (SMTJ)

Panel:
Thursday 1:15-2:30

Project Description


Louise is a freelancer Television Producer/Director and the founder of Share My Telly Job. She now works alongside co-Directors Natalie Grant, Michelle Reynolds and Dr Rowan Aust. SMTJ is a community organisation formed to offer support and guidance to screen workers who need more flexibility in their careers. SMTJ is an advisory and training organisation for both workers in film and TV and key organisations which promotes the benefits and practicalities of implementing more creative ways of working. Their campaigns for flexibility create solutions for retaining talent, addressing gender pay gap disparity, diversity, inclusion and general well-being improvement in the screen industries.

Cosmin
Popan
Manchester Metropolitan University

Panel:
Friday 3:00-4:15


Cosmin Popan is a Leverhulme Trust post-doctoral fellow, based in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. His project, ‘Doing gig work: Social implications of platform-based food deliveries’, researches the platform-based gig economy and its reconfiguration of urban spaces by investigating the management, solidarity and resistance of cycle couriers in three European cities: Manchester, Lyon (France) and Cluj-Napoca (Romania).

Valentina
Salvatierra
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

Panel:
Thursday 1:15-2:30

Project Description


Valentina holds a BA in Social Sciences (Sociology) from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, an MSC in Sociology from the University of Oxford, and an MA in Contemporary Literature and Culture from Birkbeck, University of London. She has previously worked in market research and as assistant researcher in public opinion at Centro de Estudios Públicos. Currently, she is a researcher at LEAS, the Laboratory of Surveys and Social Analysis, hosted by the School of Communications and Journalism at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile.

Dr. Saiph
Savage
Northeastern University, Civic AI Lab

Panel:
Thursday 2:45-4:00

Project Description


Saiph Savage is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences where she directs the Civic A.I. lab. She is one of the 35 Innovators under 35 by the MIT Technology Review, a Google Anita Borg Scholarship recipient, and a fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Her work has been covered in the BBC, Deutsche Welle, the Economist, and the New York Times, as well as published in top venues such as ACM CHI, CSCW, and the Web Conference, where she has also won honorable mention awards. Dr. Savage currently also collaborates with the Civic Innovation lab of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation, the United Nations, industry, and has also formalized new collaborations with Federal and local Governments where she is driving them to adopt Human Centered Design and A.I. to deliver better experiences and government services to citizens. Dr. Savage students have obtained fellowships and internships in industry (Facebook Research, Twitch Research, Twitter, Snap, and Microsoft Research) as well as academia (Oxford Internet Institute). Saiph holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and a master’s and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Dr. Savage has also worked at the University of Washington, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Additionally, Dr. Savage has been a tech worker at Microsoft Bing, Intel Labs, and a crowd research worker at Stanford.

José
Sherwood González
Manchester Metropolitan University

Panel:
Friday 3:00-4:15


José Sherwood González is a British Mexican comics artist and visual anthropologist with research interests in memory, storytelling and multi-perspectival myth-making through visual, sensory and digital methods. Since 2014, he has worked in Mexico City, investigating the ways in which families create and embody myths through storytelling. A recent graduate from the MA in Visual Anthropology at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, José is currently pursuing a PhD in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University (SODA) and FutureEverything on Mesoamerican Futurisms, a project which applies extended reality (XR) as a shapeshifting methodology to cultivate human (and more-than-human) transformations in Mexico City.

Caroline
Sinders
Convocation Design + Research

Panel:
Friday 3:00-4:15


Caroline Sinders is a critical designer, researcher, and artist. For the past few years, she has been examining the intersections of artificial intelligence, intersectional justice, systems design, harm, and politics in digital conversational spaces and technology platforms. She has worked with the United Nations, Amnesty International, IBM Watson, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others. Sinders has held fellowships with the Harvard Kennedy School, Google’s PAIR (People and Artificial Intelligence Research group), Ars Electronica’s AI Lab, the Weizenbaum Institute, the Mozilla Foundation, Pioneer Works, Eyebeam, Ars Electronica, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Sci Art Resonances program with the European Commission, and the International Center of Photography. Her work has been featured in the Tate Exchange in Tate Modern, the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, Telematic Media Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA PS1, LABoral, Wired, Slate, Hyperallergic, Clot Magazine, Quartz, the Channels Festival, and others. Sinders holds a Masters from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Danny
Spitzberg
Turning Basin Labs

Panel:
Thursday 2:45-4:00


Danny is a user researcher for a cooperative economy. He facilitates worker-led research with Turning Basin Labs, a staffing and training co-op based in Oakland, California. Previously he worked with a variety of member-led, community-oriented digital products ranging from Up & Go and Rideshare Drivers United to the Lean Startup Co. and the Harvard Berkman Center. With Start.coop, Danny co-created the Ownership Model Canvas, a tool for designing effective member-ownership, and he also organizes with Exit to Community e2c.how, enabling cooperative ownership for startups. Say hi at twitter.com/daspitzberg.

Dr. Angelika
Strohmayer
Northumbria University

Panel:
Thursday 2:45-4:00


Dr Angelika Strohmayer is co-director of the Design Feminisms Research Group, board member of the Sex Work Research Hub, and interdisciplinary researcher working closely with third sector organisations. She aims to work collaboratively on in-the-world projects that engage people at all stages of the research process to engender change towards more just worlds. To do this, she works across boundaries, bringing together disparate groups to engage in collaborative, justice-oriented, and sometimes digital endeavours. Currently, her research relates to two intertwining areas of inquiry: (1) the relationships between data, technologies, and safety for communities and people who are seldom thought about by industry and researchers alike; and (2) the ways in which digitally augmented textiles practices can create safe spaces for difficult conversations in interpersonal settings as well as for public awareness-raising. In 2021, she published her first book titled ‘Digitally Augmenting Traditional Craft Practices for Social Justice: The Partnership Quilt’. Angelika’s (sometimes award-winning) publications address justice concerns to build on and develop feminist theories. These arguments are usually based on her in-the-world research and are developed in conversation with others such as experts by experience, support workers, or other researchers.

Dr. Funda
Ustek-Splida
Oxford Internet Institute, Fair Work Project

Panel:
Thursday 4:15-5:30

Project Description


Funda Ustek-Spilda is a post-doctoral researcher and project manager at Fairwork Foundation, based at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Prior to Fairwork, Funda held post-doctoral researcher positions at Goldsmiths, University of London (ARITHMUS: How data make a people; 2014-2018) and London School of Economics (VIRT-EU: Values and Ethics in Responsible Technology in Europe; 2018-2020). She holds a D.Phil in Sociology from the University of Oxford (2015) and M.Sc in Comparative Social Policy from the same university (2010). She conducts interdisciplinary research into the visibilities and invisibilities in data and emerging technologies in the fields of labour, migration and gender; studying this from the perspective of data justice, fairness and ethics. Her research has appeared in prestigious journals such as Big Data and Society, Environment and Planning D and Science and Technology & Human Values.

Tanja
Vicas
Austrian Trade Union Federation

Panel:
Friday 4:30-5:45

Project Description


Originally from Canada, I came to Austria almost 30 years ago after studying English literature at the University of Western Ontario and started studying translation and interpretation at the University of Vienna. To finance these studies, I took a job as an administrative assistant in the education department at the Austrian Trade Union Federation. The years went by and as my job at the union developed and became more interesting, I decided to quit my studies and focus on work full time. I transferred to the international department and have been managing mainly European projects which ultimately focus on promoting decent work through social dialogue. My current project “DiDaNet” (“Digital Danube Network”), focusses on how workers meet the challenges of digitalisation and the spread of platform-based economy. Within the course of DiDaNet, a spin-off project called “RidersCollective” came into being. This project is dedicated to the improvement of working conditions for bike couriers (“riders”).

Jeff
Vize
Human Rights Watch

Panel:
Thursday 4:15-5:30

Project Description


Jeff Vize is a senior advisor in Human Rights Watch’s Alliances and Partnerships Program, which focuses on working more closely with local partners to strengthen human rights. He currently leads HRW’s engagement with the Georgia Fair Labor Platform, a coalition of independent trade unions, civil society organizations and activists working to improve conditions for workers in Georgia. In this role, Jeff led the team that developed two online tools for the coalition: the Wage Theft Calculator and the Workplace Safety Monitor.

Hays
Witt
Driver’s Seat

Panel:
Thursday 4:15-5:30

Project Description


Hays is the co-founder of the Driver’s Seat Cooperative. He’s a national leader in the emerging movement to link new mobility with equitable workforce and positive community outcomes. Hays has advised cities and national advocacy groups on triple bottom line policy development and built grassroots worker and community organizations that have won equity and justice in America’s big cities.

In his former role as Deputy Director of the Partnership for Working Families, Hays managed multiple national, industry wide campaigns that won transformational change for workers, communities, and the environment in major sectors of our economy.

Hays’s organizing background includes years helping low wage workers of color blend organizing and policy innovation at SEIU, AFSCME, and the City of Los Angeles.

Janis
Wong
University of St Andrews (CRISP)

Panel:
Friday 1:30-2:45


Janis Wong is an interdisciplinary PhD researcher in Computer Science at the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy (CRISP), University of St Andrews. She is interested in the legal and technological applications in data protection, privacy, and data ethics, where her current research aims to create a socio-technical collaborative commons framework that helps data subjects protect their personal data under existing data protection, privacy, and information regulations. Janis is currently participating in the Fall 2021 Research Sprint on Alternative Data Futures: Cooperative Principles, Data Trusts, and the Digital Economy hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University in collaboration with the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School. In 2020-21, she was a Research Fellow at the Open Data Institute, focusing on data protection and governance in online teaching, learning analytics, and educational technology. Janis holds degrees in Law from the London School of Economics and Computer Science from the University of St Andrews.

Committee