There are millions of platform workers who live all over the world, doing work that is outsourced or organised via digital platforms or apps in the gig economy. This work can include jobs as varied as taxi driving using Uber, translation on Upwork, or the training of machine learning algorithms through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Despite the potential of such work to give jobs to those who need them, platform workers have little ability to negotiate wages and working conditions with their employers, who are often on the other side of the world. Our previous research has shown that platforms often operate in relatively unregulated ways, and can encourage a race to the bottom in terms of workers' ability to defend existing jobs, liveable wages, and dignified working conditions. The potentials and risks of platform work touch down starkly in South Africa. A country that, by some measures, has the world's highest income inequality, and 28% unemployment rates. At the same time, the country has relatively well-developed internet infrastructure, and a relatively stable political climate and state/legal institutions. These factors make the country a site in which the platform economy is nascent enough to allow us to co-develop solutions with a multi-disciplinary team from Law and the Social Sciences that will offer tangible opportunities to influence policy and practice surrounding digital work. As other middle- and low-income countries quickly develop their internet infrastructures and millions of more potential digital workers rush online in search of opportunities, the interventions that this project proposes will be of crucial need if we are to avoid some of the 'race to the bottom' that the current world of digital work is bringing into being. Our project will culminate in two key initiatives. First, building on a work package of legal research, a Code of Practice will be developed to serve as an interpretive tool to outline the ways that existing regulations can be made applicable to platform workers. Second, we will develop a 'Fairwork Foundation.' Much like the Fairtrade Foundation has been able to certify the production chains of commodities like coffee or chocolate, the Fairwork Foundation will certify the production networks of the platform economy, and therefore harness consumer power to significantly contribute to the welfare and job quality of digital workers. This programme of work aims to not just uncover where fair and unfair work takes place, but also seeks to codify that knowledge into both a 'Fairwork certification scheme' and an annual ranking of platforms. These two initiatives will ultimately allow for the development of an international standard for good-quality digital working conditions. These objectives will be achieved with 5 project stages. First, the Law team will analyse S. African labour laws, social security laws, and other legal and policy regulations relating to the platform economy, and ask how those laws might be adapted to provide decent work standards for digital platform workers. At the same time, the Social Science team will use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to map the key issues faced by S. African platform workers: developing a rich understanding of how platform work may be failing to live up to decent work standards. Third, we develop meaningful decent work standards for platform work that happens outside of the Global North. Fourth, we take those standards and use them in a process of action research in which we seek to certify the digital work platforms: assigning them a Fairwork certification if they pass. Finally, through an extended process of stakeholder engagement and outreach with workers, platforms, and policy makers, we plan a short-term strategy of pressuring platforms to change their policies to improve working conditions and a longer-term strategy of influencing the direction that regulation takes in a currently highly unregulated sector.

Artificial Intelligence has altered and in future going to influence the way our economies and societies are organised and function. The economic systems are increasingly being digitalised which has generated the growing chorus around digital economy. Digital data-fuelled devices be it in our homes or workplaces, are shaping human interactions. The machines of today are going to define the human life of tomorrow. While the bold proclamations about digital technologies and their development impacts have received extensive coverage, it is rarely acknowledged that behind most contemporary digital transformations and advanced digital technologies is human labour. Just like the profitable commodities of earlier decades (oil, diamond, gold), contemporary digital products (autonomous vehicles, machine learning systems, next-generation search engines) are sourced and developed by workers in the low and middle-income regions. It is this behind-the-scene human labour that faces uncertain future. The centrality of labour from the Global South in some of these technologies raises critical questions around the new division of labour, developmental impacts for workers, and what the future would look like for workers on the continent and also other low and middle-income regions. The project explores these issues about our rapidly changing world of work and the implications on humans and regions that motors the global digital economy. The four-year project uses mixed methods to conduct a comprehensive empirical and theoretical assessment of behind the scene human labour in the Global South and leverage cross-country project partnership to develop analytical insights into the data work value chains of AI. By bringing theoretical sophistication and grounded empirical insights, the project's overall contribution is to unravel the geographies of data work and its implications for LMIs. The Planetary AI project will: (1) develop conceptual frameworks for studying data work value chains and labour market transformation, (2) generate empirical data on the scope of data work across the four case study countries and its developmental impacts (e.g. access to decent work), (3) produce research outcomes useful for academia, policy and practice. By combining discourse analysis, surveys, in-depth interviews, it captures the socio-political and economic transformations associated with the rise of data work across the Global South. Hence, the project contributes not only to the academic and policy debates surrounding AI, employment, and poverty reduction but will also be crucial in shaping the future rounds of digital-related development projects in low- and middle-income (LMI) countries. It also addresses policy-level changes required to protect the vulnerable sections of the society who are affected by the changing dynamics of technology and work. To make sure the project reaches a wider audience, it has developed multi-stakeholder networks of project partners. The ILO, business owners, policy makers, and data workers will be closely involved. Their expertise and networks will ensure it reaches actors who can influence the world of work. This is urgently needed as the risks of AI use has exposed the need for adequate regulatory reforms so that workers in the Global South are protected in their everyday lives. This project provides tools and evidence to ensure that such reforms are designed to strengthen policies related to labour standards, employment law, and social protection in the Global South and beyond.

This project aims to explore the contribution of digitally mediated labour to the provision of decent work and livelihoods among displaced persons in cities, with a focus on Berlin and Beirut. Both these cities are leading hubs for digital innovation and have recently absorbed large numbers of refugees, prompting a growth in digital work initiatives. These emerged against the backdrop of a growing online 'gig economy' around the world amid an increasingly urban and 'connected' displaced population: more than 60 percent of the world's refugees now live in cities. These combined factors of urbanised refugee economies and the digitalisation of work demand urgent research into the relationship between the online gig economy and displaced populations. Yet despite a growing body of research on digital economies in development contexts, it is poorly understood how the online gig economy reshapes the world of work among displaced persons. Aiming to fill this knowledge gap in partnership with the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), and hosted by the University of Edinburgh, this project pursues three research objectives: a) Generate empirical evidence about the digitally mediated work lives of refugees through fieldwork in Berlin and Beirut; b) Gain insights through research of selected digital platforms that offer digital work opportunities and employment trainings; c) Establish a new methodological framework that links ethnography with multidisciplinary methods in the social sciences of the digital, and develop new research skills through trainings. In fulfilment of these research objectives, the project follows two overarching questions: 1) How does digitally mediated labour reshape refugees' access to decent work and sustainable livelihoods? 2) What implications do these transformations have for the rights and policies that govern urban refugee economies, and for the way displacement is conceptualised in the social sciences? These overarching questions are complemented by three empirical sub-questions that correspond directly to the research objectives and three methodological dimensions: a) What types of digitally mediated work do refugees do, how do they get access to it, and what impact does it have on their social and economic lives? b) How do digital work platforms relate to the specific situation of displaced populations, and what impact do they pursue in comparison to the actual experiences of refugee workers? c) What new combinations of qualitative ethnographic research and digital research methods allow us to grasp how digital economies and refugees' working practices intersect and overlap? In line with the New Investigator Grant's aims, the project pursues additional objectives on two levels: skills development and impact. Skills development objectives include completion of a leadership programme at the host institution; the development of new approaches and methods during a three-months visit to the Oxford Internet Institute (OII); and the learning of effective user engagement by collaborating with the ILO and providers of digital work opportunities in the third sector and the private sector. The knowledge exchange and impact objectives include convening a workshop and an international conference with key users at the host institution; production of high-quality research outputs, including an ILO Working Paper, with impact on both users and academic beneficiaries; the creation of a project website and a Briefing for policy makers and platform developers titled 'A Just Gig Economy for Refugees'. The newly gained skills, networks and knowledge throughout this project will facilitate the creation of sustainable research capacity at the host institution through follow-up funding applications with a clear long-term aim in mind: the formation of a research cluster on 'Digital Development' at Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science.

"Fast fashion should worry all of us" was The Guardian newspaper's provocative headline calling for an international response to the exploitation of workers in global garments and footwear manufacturing. Worldwide, 70 million people work producing clothing and shoes, mostly in developing countries but also in advanced economies like the UK. 80% of these workers are women. The industry is worth US$2 trillion per year, yet workers receive poverty wages to live and work in dangerous conditions. In 2014, for example, over 1000 workers in Bangladesh were crushed to death in a factory collapse, highlighting the prioritisation of profit at the expense of people. Although workers in supply chains are vital to our everyday lives, we know very little about the women who make our clothes and shoes. The UK government's Work and Opportunities for Women programme highlights urgent concern that there is a lack of systemic collection and reporting of gender-disaggregated data by companies and other organisations involved in managing global supply chains. Women workers in supply chains are simply invisible workers. Sustainable Development Goal 8.8 targets "safe and secure working environments for all workers". Yet without systemic data the problems that lessen women's quality of life in the garment industry are not fully known and are therefore are hard to address. This Future Leaders Fellowship addresses this knowledge and practice gap by generating evidence and promoting action on the specific threats posed to female garment workers. In the global South, as well as the UK, most garment workers are young women from poor households, often living far away from home. Building on a commitment from the International Labour Organisation to eradicate gendered violence in "the world of work" (Convention 190, 2019), including acknowledging threats that occur beyond the workplace, we will evidence the risks that women workers face inside and outside of the factory, where malnutrition, mass fainting, reproductive and mental health crises, and sexual and physical abuse are reported to be commonplace. Using feminist theory and methods, we aim to highlight and challenge where gender-blind health and safety programmes hide or ignore these pervasive threats to women's wellbeing. We focus on four producer countries that represent different sites in the evolution of supply chain outsourcing: Cambodia, Ethiopia, Jordan and the UK. Across these locations, a combined 1 million people work making clothes and shoes for leading UK brands including M&S, Topshop and ASOS. Bringing together a diverse and transdisciplinary team, the project uses a participatory and ethnographic approach to investigate women's health and wellbeing at 8 industrial sites in each country, before examining the (inter)national organisation of labour and trade governance, to understand the institutional processes that make and unmake healthy working bodies. Our global approach allows us to identify the complex, more-than-local factors that perpetuate women's vulnerability in garment work and target action to address the systemic causes of inequity within supply chains. To ensure our project amplifies women workers, we are collaborating with global partners and advisors, including international organisations (ILO/IFC Better Work), labour rights advocates (Worker Rights Consortium), women's rights charities (Care), trade justice campaigns (Traidcraft Exchange) and social movements (Fashion Revolution). We will share our findings in 10 academic papers, 6 interim briefs, 4 local workshops and exhibitions, and an accessibly written final report and monograph. Our initial phase of research for impact culminates in a global launch and exhibition of outputs at Fashion Revolution Week in 2025, intended to counter the invisibility of women workers, generating media attention to galvanise policy and public support for transformative change towards just garment supply chains.

Promoting decent work standards is increasingly considered an essential element in policy agendas to achieve more sustainable and inclusive growth. However, the implementation of decent work standards in a fragmented global economic system has proven to be challenging, and there is evidence of widening inequalities and poverty within and across countries linked to disparities in employment standards and conditions. In short international and national policies do not seem to be delivering on decent work and this in turn has reanimated local policy debates, mainly evident in cities and urban areas, about how to tackle issues of precariousness and inequality. Although they are potentially significant in their own right, there is a clear need to scale up, connect and learn from these localised developments. Through comparative mixed methods research I will explore the different approaches taken to enhancing working conditions in cities and the ways in which a range of actors interact across different geographical spaces to promote fundamental notions of justice, decency and dignity at work. By focusing on six diverse cities around the world - Manchester (UK); Bremen (Germany); Buenos Aries (Argentina); Montreal (CA); New York (USA); and Seoul (South Korea); this project will explore how the type and quality of jobs on offer in different local contexts have direct and indirect effects on wider issues of inequality and social justice, and how different actors respond to issues of labour market exclusion, poverty and insecurity. All of these cities have engaged in decent work initiatives, including local political commitments to tackling low wages and precarious work, and have seen trade union and worker mobilisation around specific issues such as labour rights and workplace democracy. At a time of continued volatility and uncertainty in the global economy, the current project seeks to both recognise and highlight good practice in respect of improving the quality of work, while also exploring the conditions under which a decent work agenda can be developed and sustained. In this sense, 'Cities' provide a theoretical lens through which to view long-run changes in the global economy and the labour market and to examine closely the 'winners and losers' of greater financial integration and increased capital and labour mobility. By combining high quality academic research outputs with ongoing impact and knowledge exchange activities, the project seeks to provide both theoretical and practical answers to pressing global concerns around low pay, inequality and insecurity. The UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship represents an excellent opportunity for me to build on my existing research activities and contacts to and to establish a distinct and innovative international research agenda encompassing the global north and south, that has a direct impact on policy and practice.