Join our lively discussion of directions for sociological work on prescient topics like AI, work automation, surveillance,  digitization, algorithmic management, and platform work, as well as on the implications for inequality along lines of  class, race/ethnicity, and gender.  

DATE: Thursday, May 2, 2024 

TIME: 10am-11am EST 

Please contact the moderator for the Zoom link at argun@ku.edu. 

PANELISTS:  

Dr. Ya-Wen Lei, Harvard University. Her recent research focuses on work automation and augmentation, and on techno-state  capitalism. Dr. Lei’s scholarship spans across political sociology, sociology work and labor, economic sociology, and science and  technology studies. She is the lead of author of “Automation and Augmentation: AI, Robots, and Work,” Annual Review of Sociology (2024) and the author of “Delivering Solidarity: Platform Architecture and Collective Contention in China’s Platform Economy,”  American Sociological Review (2021), “Upgrading China through Automation: Manufacturers, Workers and the Techno Developmental State,” Work, Employment and Society (2022), and The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State  Capitalism in China (Princeton University Press, 2023).  

Dr. Karen Levy, Cornell University. She researches how law and technology interact to regulate social life, with particular focus on  social and organizational aspects of surveillance. Much of Dr. Levy’s research analyzes the uses of monitoring for social control in  various contexts, from long-haul trucking to intimate relationships. She is also interested in how data collection uniquely impacts,  and is contested by, marginalized populations. She is the author of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace  

Surveillance (Princeton University Press, 2023) and “Privacy Threats in Intimate Relationships,” Journal of Cybersecurity (2020)  

Dr. Lindsey Cameron, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on how algorithmic management is changing the modern  workplace, with an emphasis on the gig economy. Professor Cameron has an on-going, seven-year ethnography of the largest  sector of the gig economy, the ride-hailing industry, examining how algorithmic management changes managerial control. She is  the author of “The Making of the ‘Good Bad’ Job: How Algorithmic Management Repurposes Workplace Consent through Constant  and Confined Choice,” Administrative Science Quarterly (2024), and “’Making out’ While Driving: Relational and Efficiency Games  in the Gig Economy,” Organization Science (2022). 

Dr. Benjamin Shestakofsky, University of Pennsylvania. His research centers on the relationship between work, technology, organizations, and political economy. Some of his recent projects examine the hidden workers who support AI systems, the governance of digital platforms, and how venture capital affects organizational culture and change in the tech industry. He is the author of Behind the Startup How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (University of California Press, 2024), and co-author of “Making Platforms Work: Relationship Labor and the Management of Publics,” Theory and Society (2020). 

Moderated by Dr. Argun Saatcioglu, University of Kansas