WIAS Workshop: Academic Labour, Digital Media and Capitalism
<br>
<br>Wednesday 31 January 2018
<br>13:00-17:00
<br>UG04
<br>309 Regent Street
<br>University of Westminster
<br>London W1B 2HW
<br>
<br>Register:
<br>http://wias.ac.uk/event/wias-workshop-academic-labour-digital-media-and-capit
<br>alism/
<br>
<br>This workshop marks the publication of the special issue “Academic Labour,
<br>Digital Media and Capitalism” in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism &
<br>Critique. We will hear presentations by experts who have contributed to the
<br>issue: guest editor Thomas Allmer (University of Stirling), Karen Gregory
<br>(University of Edinburgh) and Jamie Woodcock (LSE).
<br>
<br>Modern universities have always been embedded in capitalism in political,
<br>economic and cultural terms. In 1971, at the culmination of the Vietnam
<br>War, a young student pointed a question towards Noam Chomsky: “How can you,
<br>with your very courageous attitude towards the war in Vietnam, survive in
<br>an institution like MIT, which is known here as one of the great war
<br>contractors and intellectual makers of this war?” Chomsky had to admit that
<br>his workplace was a major organisation conducting war research, thereby
<br>strengthening the political contradictions and inequalities in capitalist
<br>societies.
<br>
<br>Today, universities are positioning themselves as active agents of global
<br>capital, transforming urban spaces into venues for capital accumulation and
<br>competing for international student populations for profit. Steep tuition
<br>fees are paid for precarious futures. Increasingly, we see that the value
<br>of academic labour is measured in capitalist terms and therefore subject to
<br>new forms of control, surveillance and productivity measures. Situated in
<br>this economic and political context, the new special issue of tripleC
<br>(edited by Thomas Allmer and Ergin Bulut) is a collection of critical
<br>contributions that examine universities, academic labour, digital media and
<br>capitalism.
<br>
<br>
<br>Workshop presentations:
<br>
<br>Anger in Academic Twitter: Sharing, Caring, and Getting Mad Online
<br>Karen Gregory, University of Edinburgh
<br>
<br>Digital Labour in the University: Understanding the Transformations of
<br>Academic Work in the UK
<br>Jamie Woodcock, LSE
<br>
<br>Theorising and Analysing Academic Labour
<br>Thomas Allmer, University of Stirling
<br>
<br>The workshop will be chaired by WIAS Director and tripleC co-editor
<br>Christian Fuchs. WIAS invites everybody interested to attend this afternoon
<br>of talks and discussions tackling the question of academic labour in the
<br>age of digital capitalism. A coffee break is provided.
<br>
<br>Thomas Allmer is Lecturer in Digital Media at the University of Stirling,
<br>Scotland, UK, and a member of the Unified Theory of Information Research
<br>Group, Austria. His publications include Towards a Critical Theory of
<br>Surveillance in Informational Capitalism (Peter Lang, 2012) and Critical
<br>Theory and Social Media: Between Emancipation and Commodification
<br>(Routledge, 2015). For more information, see Thomas’ website.
<br>
<br>Karen Gregory is a Lecturer in Digital Sociology at the University of
<br>Edinburgh, a digital sociologist and ethnographer. She researches the
<br>relationship between work, technology, and emerging forms of labour,
<br>exploring the intersection of work and labor, social media use, and
<br>contemporary spirituality. She is the co-editor of the book Digital
<br>Sociologies (Policy Press, 2017).
<br>
<br>Jamie Woodcock is a fellow at the LSE and author of Working The Phones. His
<br>current research focuses on digital labour, the sociology of work, the gig
<br>economy, resistance, and videogames. He has previously worked as a postdoc
<br>on a research project about videogames, as well as another on the
<br>crowdsourcing of citizen science. Jamie completed his PhD in sociology at
<br>Goldsmiths, University of London and has held positions at Goldsmiths,
<br>University of Leeds, University of Manchester, Queen Mary, NYU London, and
<br>Cass Business School.
<br>
<br>Christian Fuchs is Professor at the University of Westminster. He is the
<br>Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) and
<br>Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS). His fields of expertise
<br>are critical digital & social media studies, Internet & society, political
<br>economy of media and communication, information society theory, social
<br>theory and critical theory. He co-edits the open-access journal
<br>triple:Communication, Capitalism & Critique with Marisol Sandoval.
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