In collaboration with the ILO (International Labour Organization), ACM SIGCAS (the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computers and Society), and Yale University, DiPLab is proud to share the call for papers of the 9th annual conference of the International Network on Digital Labor. INDL-9 will take place from September 9 to 11, 2026 and, for the first time, will be hosted at the headquarters of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. The deadline for abstract submissions is April 30, 2026 (via the Sciencesconf platform). Submit Your Abstract We aim for this call to reach every scholar, practitioner, and organizer working on digital labor and AI. INDL conferences have consistently provided a space where rigorous research intersects with real-world practice, and where interdisciplinary dialogue is not only encouraged but expected. With this ninth edition, we aim to raise the bar even higher.Hosting our conference at the ILO — the United Nations agency at the heart of global labor governance — lends this edition a singular importance. This is a moment of convergence for our field and a unique opportunity to deepen our collective commitment by connecting scholarship with workers’ advocacy and global policy debates. > “AI Supply Chains: Building an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda for AI and > Labor” > > Theme of this edition This edition seeks contributions that explore: •  Transparency and traceability in AI models •  Working conditions and occupational safety and health of human-in-the-loop workers •  Best practices in ethical AI and corporate social responsibility •  Social dialogue in AI-mediated work •  Organizational, legal, and financial perspectives on investment in ethical AI •  Regulatory compliance, including developments such as the EU AI Act •  Proposals for genuinely human-centric AI supply chains •  Ecological sustainability of AI infrastructure We also warmly welcome submissions on themes that have defined and strengthened our community over the years, including (but not limited to): algorithmic management and workers’ resistance, platform cooperativism and alternative business models, legal and institutional responses to platform labor, and the gendered dimensions of digital labor.Please consider submitting your work and, above all, help us spread the word. See you in Geneva! Read the Full Call for Papers This edition of the INDL conference is organized through a collaborative partnership between DiPLab (Digital Platform Labor), the ILO (International Labour Organization), ACM SIGCAS (the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computers and Society), and Yale University.

Video of the seminar “AI and Water Justice: Data Centres as Sites of Struggle”, featuring our colleague Nicolas Diaz Bejarano who is working with DiPLab and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile on our common project SEED: Social and Environmental Effects of Data connectivity: Hybrid ecologies of transoceanic cables and data centers in Chile and France. Nicolás Diaz Bejarano is an architect (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia), researcher, lecturer and PhD candidate in Architecture, Design and Urban Studies at UC Chile. Currently, Nicolas is a doctoral researcher at the Millennium Nucleus: Future of Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR), where he studies hyperscale data centers exploring how society intertwines with digital data matter in local territories. In 2023, Nicolas won the CCA “Architecture as Public concern” 2023 fellowship with Marina Otero Verzier and Serena Dambrosio for exploring environmental justice of data centers in Quilicura, Chile. In 2025, he was co-curator of the Chilean Pavilion – Reflective Intelligences – at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale with Linda Schilling and Serena Dambrosio and a member of the ECOS-ANID collaboration project SEED: Social and Environmental Effects of Data connectivity: Hybrid ecologies of transoceanic cables and data centers in Chile and France.

The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) hosted the conference “Future of Work” in Brussels on February 10-11, 2026, bringing together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to examine how contemporary transformations are reshaping the world of work. Among the contributions was a presentation by DiPLab’s Paola Tubaro, who offered crucial insights into the relationship between artificial intelligence and job quality. Tubaro’s presentation centered on a forthcoming chapter titled “What is AI doing to Job Quality? Platformization, Fissured Workplaces and Dispersion,” co-authored with Antonio Casilli. This work will appear in the new edited volume Job Quality in a Turbulent Era, edited by Janine Leschke and Agnieszka Piasna and published by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. The chapter’s key intervention challenges a common assumption in discussions about AI and work: that technology alone determines outcomes for workers. As Tubaro emphasized during her presentation, AI does not operate in a vacuum. Instead, its impacts on job quality emerge from the broader political economy and organizational contexts in which these technologies are introduced and deployed. The chapter explores three interconnected phenomena transforming contemporary work: * Platformization: The expansion of platform-based work arrangements that mediate labor through digital technologies, creating new forms of employment relationships and power dynamics. * Fissured Workplaces: The fragmentation of traditional employment structures, where work is increasingly outsourced, subcontracted, or restructured in ways that distance workers from the organizations that benefit from their labor. * Dispersion: The geographic and organizational scattering of work processes, enabled by digital technologies but shaped by strategic choices about how to organize production and manage labor. The conference featured a preview of the new book on job quality, with editors Leschke and Piasna exploring how AI, digitalisation, and decarbonisation are reshaping work organization and affecting core components of job quality—not through technological inevitability, but through deliberate choices made by organizations and policymakers. Dr. Funda Ustek Spilda complemented these discussions with concrete insights on datafication and surveillance practices at companies like Sama and Amazon UK, demonstrating how these dynamics transform work on the ground. Dr. Massimo Mensi, serving as discussant, reinforced a crucial theme: governance choices matter more than the technology itself. He also challenged the common framing of training as a cost, arguing instead that it should be understood as an investment in workers and work quality. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As part of our DiPLab seminar, we are delighted to welcome our friend and colleague, Dr. Funda Ustek Spilda, Senior Lecturer and South East Asia Programmes Lead at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, on 20 February 2026 at 3:00 pm CET. The seminar will be held in person at ISC-PIF (Institut des Systèmes Complexes – Paris Île de France), 113 rue Nationale, 75013 Paris. To register, click on the button below and fill out the form. The seminar is free to attend. Register here THE DIGITAL ASSEMBLY LINE: UPGRADING DATA WORK WITHIN THE GLOBAL PRODUCTION NETWORKS OF AI This paper investigates how service-based labour practices in data work sites, such as data labelling and content moderation, contribute to development within global production networks (GPNs). Service-based labour practices are gaining wider attention as governments in the Global South actively promote data services as a pathway to economic growth and seek integration to digital value chains. Against this background, the paper examines labour dynamics and managerial perspectives in data work, analysing their implications for economic and social development across diverse geographies. Drawing on upgrading literature within the GPN framework, the paper investigates the potential of service nodes to achieve economic, social and functional upgrading. The findings underscore the difficulties service nodes face in achieving upgrading due to structural dependencies and power asymmetries within the GPNs. Peripheral economies encounter additional barriers, including inadequate infrastructure, skill shortages and investment gaps. The study highlights the urgent need for structural reforms and collective action to counteract systemic inequalities in global production networks, paving the way for a more equitable integration of service-based labour into the global digital economy. Dr. Funda Ustek Spilda is a Senior Lecturer and South East Asia Programmes Lead at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. She holds a DPhil in Sociology from the University of Oxford & St. Cross College, and has held various research positions at Goldsmiths, University of London (ARITHMUS), London School of Economics and Political Science (VIRT-EU), and the Oxford Internet Institute & University of Oxford (Fairwork). She studies topics related to labour, care, work and employment in the digital economy, from an ethics, justice and fairness perspective. Her full list of publications could be accessed at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/funda.ustek/

We are pleased to announce that DiPLab co-director Paola Tubaro presented at the annual conference of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), dedicated to the age of artificial intelligence. In her presentation, she challenged common narratives of automation by revealing a fundamental truth: behind the “magic” of contemporary AI lies intensive human labor. This includes the often-invisible work of data annotators, content moderators, translators, voice actors, and numerous other workers who make AI systems function. Paola Tubaro’s research highlights how OSH issues in AI production arise directly from the organization of this work. The combination of outsourcing, offshoring, and digital intermediation creates precarious labor conditions that significantly affect workers’ mental health and well-being. Her presentation focused on three critical dimensions of occupational health risks: * Stress from uncertainty and long/unusual working hours: Data workers face unstable employment conditions, irregular schedules, and the constant pressure of uncertain income streams. * Social isolation: The digitally mediated nature of this work, often performed remotely and with little direct human contact, contributes to profound feelings of isolation among workers. * Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Content moderation workers, in particular, face severe psychological consequences from repeated exposure to disturbing, violent, or traumatic content. The ETUI annual conference on Occupational Safety and Health brought together researchers, trade union representatives, policymakers, and practitioners to examine the challenges and opportunities that artificial intelligence presents for workplace safety and health across Europe. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our DiPLab seminar is delighted to welcome on November 21, 2025, at 3:00 PM CET our friend and collaborator Dr. Martín Tironi, of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.. The seminar will be held in person at the Shaker Space of the ISC-PIF (Institut des Systèmes Complexes – Paris Île de France), 113 rue Nationale, 75013 Paris. To register, click on the button below and fill out the form. The seminar is free to attend. Register here GROUNDING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN ITS PLANETARY CONDITIONS: AN EXPLORATION AND INTERVENTION ON RARE EARTHS IN CHILE In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as one of the main socio-technical solutions for tackling the global climate crisis. It is credited with the ability to mitigate its effects through tools for reducing emissions, predictive modeling, and environmental monitoring. However, its expansion is based on a narrative that perpetuates the illusion of an immaterial and deterritorialized technology, capable of emancipating us from the physical world on which it nevertheless depends. This presentation outlines a research-creation program aimed at considering the terrestrial condition of AI, i.e., its material, ecological, and geopolitical anchors. Based on the controversy surrounding rare earth extraction in southern Chile, which places the town of Penco on the map of global extractive tensions, analytical and curatorial operations are explored with the aim of “grounding” AI in its geological, social, and political conditions. Drawing on the notion of “excess” developed by Marisol de la Cadena, the aim is to highlight the need to pay attention to what goes beyond modern classification frameworks. In the intertwining of geological times, mining projects, transformed ecologies, and affected communities, controversies emerge that connect local landscapes to global debates around critical minerals for the digital transition. Martín Tironi is an associate professor and former director of the School of Design at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, as well as director of the Núcleo Milenio Futures of Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR). A sociologist trained at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, he holds a master’s degree from Paris Descartes University (Sorbonne V) and a doctorate from the Centre for Sociology of Innovation at the École des Mines de Paris. In 2018, he was a visiting professor at the Centre for Invention and Social Process at Goldsmiths, University of London. He currently leads the Fondecyt project “Digital Technologies for Climate Change” (2024–2028) and is principal investigator of the SEED project (Social and Environmental Effects of Data Connectivity, Chile–France, ECOS-ANID), which examines the hybrid ecologies associated with submarine cables and data centers, essential infrastructures for satellite data processing. His work lies at the intersection of design, technology, and ecology, exploring the links between artificial intelligence, digital materialities, and the planetary limits of innovation. He was part of the team that won the Gold Medal at the London Design Biennale 2023 with the Tectonic Resonance project, and is currently presenting, with Manuela Garretón, the installation Hybrid Ecologies: The Planetary Metabolism of AI at the Venice Biennale 2025.

We are pleased to announce that on Thursday, October 30, 3:30 CET/2:30 GMT, Dr. Paola Tubaro (DiPLab, CNRS) will be speaking at the upcoming FairWork workshop, alongside Dr. Milagros Miceli (DiPLab associate researcher, DAIR, and Weizenbaum Institute) and Ephantus Kanyugi (INDL plenary speaker and DiPLab collaborator). Together, they will contribute to discussions on ongoing research and initiatives around online labour and workers’ rights. The event will bring together leading scholars, trade union representatives, and workers’ associations to explore the realities of online work—its challenges, working conditions, and regulatory perspectives. You are all invited to register here. Paola Tubaro Milagros Miceli Ephantus Kanyugi -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FAIRWORK PROJECT “Online Workers’ Challenges, Working Conditions, and Regulation” October 30, 2:30 PM GMT Online workers (also called cloudworkers, crowdworkers, or microworkers) are a key part of the platform economy. Platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upwork, Freelancer, and others gather millions of workers worldwide. A report recently estimated up to 435 million workers globally (Datta et al., 2023). Studies have highlighted how these workers face precarity, fierce competition (usually at an international level), underpayment and unpaid labour, poor working conditions, unfair management, and health and safety risks and harms. Since platforms impose a self-employment model, these workers are excluded from basic labour protection. Additionally, the nature of these platforms creates barriers for workers to organize. These issues pose extra obstacles for cloudworkers to fight for better conditions and to participate in regulatory discussions. This online workshop will gather world-leading researchers on this topic and confederations, trade unions, and associations to discuss the problems cloudworkers face and potential paths to improve their working conditions. It will also discuss paths to address those issues in regulatory debates (from the ILO convention to regional and national proposals). The workshop is organized by the Fairwork Cloudwork Project, based at the Oxford Internet Institute and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. The workshop will take place online on October 30 at 2:30 PM British Time. The language used will be English. Find the registration link here: https://wzb-eu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tIzk-95LTSinQEqRr_dJjQ Union representatives and workers’ leaders are welcome. Feel free to share this invitation with unions and workers’ associations that have initiatives aimed at these workers or are interested in the topic. Agenda 2:30 PM GMT (3:30 PM CET) – Opening Remarks – Jonas Valente 2:40 PM GMT (3:40 PM CET) – Findings from Researchers * Jonas Valente – Fairwork Project, Oxford Internet Institute * Milagros Miceli – Data Workers’ Inquiry, Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and Weizenbaum Institute * Paola Tubaro – DiPlab, Centre national de la recherche scientifique 3:20 PM GMT (4:20 PM CET) – Reflections from Unions and Workers’ Associations * Monica Tepfer – International Trade Union Confederation Legal Officer * Hod Anyigba, Chief Economist, ITUC-Africa * Lucie Susova – European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) Adviser * Marcelo Di Stefano, Secretary of Trade Union Strengthening and Organization of the TUCA * Ephantus Kanyugi, Vice President of the Data Labelers Association 4:00 PM GMT (5:00 PM CET) – Q&A 4:25 PM GMT (5:25 PM CET) – Final Remarks

Our DiPLab seminar will welcome on September 26, 2025, at 3:00 PM CET, Assistant Professor Tim Christiaens (Tilburg University), Associate Professor Francesca Ciulli (Tilburg University), and Assistant Professor Ivana Vranjes (Tilburg University), for an exciting presentation titled Building community around what matters: network bricolage among online crowdworkers. The seminar will be held in person at Shaker Space, located at the ISC-PIF, 113 rue Nationale, 75013 Paris, France. To register, click on the button below and fill out the form. The seminar is free to attend. Register to seminar Building community around what matters: network bricolage among online crowdworkers > Digital labor platforms rarely provide the social infrastructure that > traditional workplaces offer, yet large numbers of online crowdwork platform > (CLP) workers still succeed in forging a sense of community online. Building > on theories of social well-being and scholarship on labor platforms in > management and organization studies, we examine how such bottom-up > community-building unfolds and how it affects workers’ well-being on Amazon > Mechanical Turk, Prolific, and Clickworker. Over the past two years we carried > out two complementary studies. We argue that CLP workers strike social > connections in attempts to respond to so-called “matters of concerns”, i.e., > challenges and opportunities emerging from the socio-technical environment of > crowdwork platforms. Study 1 is qualitative study in which CLP workers > answered open-ended questions about whether, how, and for what kinds of issues > they communicate with peers. Study 2 is quantitative study measuring CLP > workers’ preferred peer-communication modes and their psychological need > fulfilment (autonomy, competence, relatedness) over time. Together, the > studies suggest that (a) CLP workers (a) actively construct communities in > spaces beyond the platforms themselves, (b) that they do out of various > motivations, and (c) that these connections are systematically linked to their > occupational well-being (regardless of the type of communication). The > findings advance theory on platform labor by integrating qualitative insights > into communicative practices with quantitative evidence on their consequences, > and they suggest concrete leverage points for platforms and worker collectives > aiming to foster sustainable digital workplaces. Tim Christiaens is Assistant Professor of Economic Ethics and Philosophy at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His research focuses on critical theory, workplace democracy, and the impact of digital technologies on labor. He has written books on the gig economy (Digital Working Lives, 2022) and Italian political philosophy (Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought, 2026). His research has appeared in journals like Big Data & Society, European Journal of Political Theory, Ethics & Information Technology, and Critical Policy Studies. Francesca Ciulli is an Associate Professor of Organization Studies/Global Management of Social Issues at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on organizations and novel digital technologies, in relation to grand challenges, sustainability and sustainable development. She published her work in journals such as Journal of World Business, Journal of Business Ethics, Long Range Planning and Journal of Management Studies. Ivana Vranjes is an Assistant Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the emergence and prevention of workplace mistreatment and the influence of technology in shaping employee wellbeing at work. She published her work in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology and Academy of Management Review.

DiPLab, as one of the co-organizers of INDL-8 (the 8th annual conference of the International Network on Digital Labor), has allocated 11 scholarships to support travel, accommodation, and meals of promising speakers. The theme of this year’s conference is “Contesting Digital Labor: Resistance, Counter-uses, and New Directions in Research”. The recipients represent a global cohort of emerging scholars whose research touches upon the social and economic impacts of digital labor worldwide. The studies they will be presenting at INDL-8 span diverse topics and geographic contexts—from AI work in Romania, to gig work in India and Brazil, to freelance work in Argentina. They will be addressing critical issues like algorithmic management, gender dynamics, and health impacts. Here is the final list of our recipients: * Gonzague Isirabahenda (Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai [Cluj-Napoca], Romania) for the paper Reconsidering the implementation of Artificial intelligence in call centre jobs: Ethnographic study * Mariana Fernández Massi (CONICET, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [Buenos Aires], Argentina) for the paper Algorithmic management and labour control on freelance platforms (in collaboration with Julieta Longo)   * James Oyange (African Content Moderators Union [Nairobi], Kenya), for the paper Empowering AI’s Invisible Workforce: Advancing Transparency and Data Protection for Data Workers. * Ethan Chiu (Yale University [New Haven], USA), for the paper The Human Circuit: A Comparative Study of the Semiconductor Industry’s Labor Conditions in the US and Taiwan * Debarun Narayan Dutta (Hertie School of Governance [Berlin], Germany) for the paper Orchestrating Mobility – How Immigration Agencies, Universities, and Platform Companies Construct the Migration and Labor Pathways of Indian Food Delivery Workers in Berlin * Dipsita Dhar (Centre for Studies of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University [New Delhi], India), for the paper From Riders to Influencers: The “Gigfluencer” Phenomenon in Ridesourcing DLPs (in collaboration with Ashique Ali Thuppilikkat) * Neha Gupta (Tata Institute of Social Sciences [Mumbai], India), for the paper Motherhood at the margins: ASHAs and the digital labour of antenatal care work * Søren Bøgh Sørensen (Copenhagen Business School [Copenhagen], Denmark), for the paper The Humans Behind the Filter: Uncovering the Costs and Consequences of Content Moderators in Kenya (in collaboration with Ephantus Kanyugi) * Amanda Biazzi (Universidade Estadual de Maringá [Maringá], Brazil), for the paper Technostress and the Health Related Risks on Content Production of Self-Employed Professionals: A Study with Brazilian Psychologists * Kanikka Sersia (Graduate Institute of International and Development studies [Geneva], Switzerland), for her paper Algorithms and the politics of production in the platform economy * Subhashri Sarkar (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research [Mohali], India), for the paper Precarity in Motion: Gendered Experiences in India’s Ride-Hailing Platform Work Please join us at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna (Aula Magna, Santa Cristina venue), on September 10, 9am to meet our recipients at the scholarship ceremony during the opening session of the INDL-8 conference.

As one of the main organizers behind the 8th annual conference of the International Network on Digital Labor (INDL-8), DiPLab is proud to announce that our comprehensive program is now online, setting the stage for September 10-12, 2025, when Bologna will host one of the largest gatherings in digital labor research. his milestone event brings together a global network of researchers, practitioners, and activists to bridge the critical gap between academic investigation and the lived realities of workers’ struggles worldwide. Through our collaborative partnership with the University of Bologna, Fondazione Di Vittorio, and the International Labor Organization (ILO), we have crafted a program that reflects our commitment to understanding digital work not as an abstract phenomenon but as a concrete set of practices that reshape lives, communities, and economies across the globe. This year’s theme, “Contesting Digital Labor: Resistance, counter-uses, and new directions for research,” emerges directly from DiPLab’s core mission to promote social change by illuminating the material conditions of the production of AI technologies. In particular, documenting how workers navigate, resist, and reimagine the digital economy’s constraints and opportunities has become a central issue. We have managed to accommodate nearly 200 oral presentations and posters, drawing speakers from six continents who will engage in discussions that stretch across disciplines and countries, creating the kind of interdisciplinary dialogue that has always been central to DiPLab’s approach. INDL-8 features keynote speaker Sarah T. Roberts (UCLA), who will examine “The Hydra of Artificial Intelligence: Labor Devaluation and Erosion of Human Agency,” drawing on her research as author of “Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media” and director of UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. María Luz Rodríguez Fernández (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha) will present “Property rights and monetisation of the personal data of platform workers,” based on her work as former ILO Senior Specialist and author of over 200 publications on platform economy labor law. Sandro Mezzadra (University of Bologna) will deliver his talk “Beyond resistance. Digital Labor, Social Cooperation and Infrastructural Struggles,” contributing his expertise in political theory and contemporary capitalism analysis. The program also features a groundbreaking one-day event with a panel featuring AI data workers. The venue is actually the most original aspect, as the panel will take place inside an actual data center—the Tecnopolo DAMA. This represents an unprecedented opportunity to hear the firsthand accounts of the material conditions and human experiences behing AI, that our research seeks to understand and improve. Moreover, it will be a great opportunity to foster solidarity by establish a dialogue between European, South American, and African new and “legacy” union leaders and community organizers. The conference’s special union panel includes Joan Kinyua, President of the Data Labelers Association; Felipe Corredor Álvarez, co-founder of Riders x Derechos and former Deliveroo rider with a PhD in Social Psychology; and Kauna Malgwi, co-founder of the Africa Content Moderators Union, who was named among Time’s 100 most influential people in AI for 2024 and testified before the European Parliament on digital platform work conditions. Beyond traditional academic sessions, we have secured some of the University of Bologna’s most historic venues, situating our contemporary concerns within centuries of scholarly tradition, while our dedicated evening tour will explore Bologna through the lens of its activist movements, connecting past struggles with present-day digital labor organizing.