The International Digital Labor Network (INDL) is pleased to announce its eighth annual conference, which will be held at the University of Bologna, Italy, on September 10-12, 2025. INDL conferences provide a unique opportunity to share knowledge and new perspectives in research and practice related to digital labor. Broadly understood, the scope of this concept encompasses unpaid work on social media, paid work mediated by digital platforms (both location-based and online), formal employment in technology industries, and even traditional occupations that have undergone processes of digitization, platformization, and intensive use of big data and artificial intelligence. Each year, the organizers of the conference propose an overarching theme on which to particularly encourage submissions, as a way to reflect the rich diversity of views on this multifaceted object, to consolidate existing knowledge, and to highlight new ways forward.
The theme of this year, "Contesting digital labor," builds on the observation that the recent rise of digital labor parallels an unprecedented surge of forms of individual and collective resistance in multiple geographies and settings. The strikes of delivery riders in Latin America, the unionization of content moderators in Africa, the organization of data workers and social media influencers in Europe, accompany emerging and more informal initiatives of mutualism and solidarity as well as everyday acts of individual resistance. Digital labor is becoming a key site of contestation for the future of work and of technological development.
This conference seeks to examine how platform workers navigate, challenge, and reshape algorithmic management systems while forging innovative forms of solidarity and collective action. It also aims to reflect on the perspectives that technological developments open for workers in order to escape everyday surveillance, to resist top-down control and to organize to defend their rights.
For this purpose, this year's INDL-8 conference invites submissions along four "Current topics" that explore these issues:
Emerging forms of individual and collective action in digitally mediated work
Workers' resistance to algorithms
Technology as a tool for worker organizing and collective action
Legal frameworks, regulatory initiatives, and institutional responses
Four more "Legacy topics" have been introduced, focusing on subjects that previously garnered substantial interest from conference presenters:
Algorithmic management and labor control
Platform cooperativism and alternative business models
Platformisation and precariousness
Gender and digital labor
The organizers also welcome submissions for a "Starting Topics" series, focusing on three emerging and currently under-researched areas that have the potential to drive meaningful progress in the field:
the psycho-social and health-related risks of platform work
the environmental challenges appertaining to digital labor
the experiences, identities, purposes and viewpoints of the other "side" of the platforms, composed by clients and employers.
To submit, please visit the Submission tab of this website.
Abstracts should:
Have a maximum length of 400 words
Be written in English
Be submitted through the conference management system SciencesConf
Please remember to specify:
Your name and affiliation
Title
Abstract (including research objective, methodology, main findings and/or theoretical development, and where relevant, contribution to understanding worker organizing and resistance in digital labor)
Through a drop-down menu, you will be asked to choose from among one of the 11 topics mentioned above (the four Current, the four Legacy, and the three Starting).
You have the option to add a comment or a supporting file if needed.
Abstract submission deadline: April 27, 2025
Notification of acceptance: June 4, 2025
For details, visit https://indl-8.sciencesconf.org/