“Scams, Bots, and Digital Workers:  Deception in Online Platform Economies,”  Technologies of Deception, Information Society Project, Yale Law School, 2022


“International Outsourcing,” California Dreaming: Regulating the Gig Economy Symposium, University of the Pacific School of Law, 2022


“The Uneasy Relationship of Labor Activists and AI,” Economies of Virtue:  The Circulation of Ethics in AI and Digital Culture.  Deakin University, Australia.  2021        

In the International Affairs Program at Washington University St. Louis, I’ve been teaching several courses: Virtual Money Makes the World Go Round:  Paypal, Bitcoin, and The Politics of Demonetization; Drones, Biometrics, and Surveillance; and Inequality, Development, and Transnational Social Justice.  My upcoming courses for 2023 will be International Law and Human Rights, and Indian Barbie, Asian Tigers, and IT Dreams: The Politics of Globalization and Development in South Asia


See David Gerard answer questions for my Virtual Money class, about his book “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain”

What I'm Working on at the Moment

BBC World News (Video), “Call Centre Accents:  Tech Company Develops Software to Change Accents” (August 27, 2022)

Times of London:  “App Changes Call Centre Workers’ Accents to Sound More American,” by Keiran Southern (August 26, 2022)

SFGate:  “Sanas, The Buzzy Bay Area Startup that Wants to Make the World Sound Whiter,” by Joshua Bote (August 23, 2022)

The Verge:  “Reselling Gig Work Is Tiktok’s Newest Side Hustle,” by Mia Sato (Feb 9, 2022)

Presentations

Washington University, St. Louis

​International Affairs Program

One Brookings Drive, MC-1085
St. Louis, MO 63130

wposter@wustl.edu

wrposter@gmail.com


Updated September 2022

Article:  “Striking by Telegraph, Avatar, and Geotag: Changing ICT Landscapes of Virtual Protest,” International Journal of Communication, 15(2021): 4360–4382.

Article:  “Data Battles, Platform Shutdowns, and Digital Rights of Surveillance:  Labor Politics in the Online Sex Industry,” Saint Louis University Law Journal, 65(1), 2021

Spanish Translation:  “Enactments of Nation in Transnational Call Centers,” by myself and  Kiran Mirchandani, in El Call Center Global:  Cultura, Trabajo y Poder en Capitalismo Digital (The Global Call Center:  Culture, Labor, and Power in Digital Capitalism), edited by Rafael Alarcón Medina, 2021.  Tijuana:  El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
(See the English version in our book Borders in Service)

Correspondence (Letter to the Editor) in Nature:  “Tech Firms Need Black AI Scholars and Labour Rights” (by Ifeoma Ajunwa, Sareeta Amrute, Lilly Irani, Meg Stalcup and myself, on behalf of Labor Tech Research Network), 2021

Book Monograph: Multi-surveillances:  Transnational Digital Agency in the Outsourced Services of Indian Call Centers, MIT Press, Forthcoming

Publications

-- Special Issues Out This Year: “Scams, Fakes, and Frauds” for New Media & Society, and “Digitizing Borders, Cities, and Landscapes” for Information & Culture


-- Labor Tech Research Network.  I’m so thrilled that our decade-long reading group has transitioned into a public-facing non-profit which can engage with the community!  Labor Tech is a network of scholars, activists, and workers exploring intersections labor, technology, feminism, anti-racism, and transnationalism.  Our goal is to create a unique environment that is interdisciplinary, justice-oriented, and forging of solidarities across global north and south.


As founder and director, I’m joined by an amazing executive board and set of working group coordinators.  We’ve been starting with a variety of activities including a Speaker Series, a peer support group, and social justice advocacy.  Stay tuned for our launch event later in 2022.  Learn more about us at http://labortechresearchnework.org.  If you’d like to become a member, email me directly at wrposter@gmail.com.  Help support us to get off the ground and do our launch through our GoFundMe 

-- Book Series.  One of our first activities from the network is a new book series with MIT Press on Labor and Technology.  See a fuller description of the series here.  Tell us about your project!  Send inquires to me and our editor at the press, Katie Helke, helkekat@mit.edu

-- Book Award.  Received by contributors of digitalSTS: A Field Guide, Princeton University Press. The Amsterdamska Award, from the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, is given for a significant creative collaboration in an edited book or special issue in the broad field of science and technology studies.  My chapter is: “Sound Bites, Sentiments, and Accents: Digitizing Communicative Labor in the Era of Global Outsourcing.”

In Memoriam

Extended Profiles and Podcasts

See My Work Discussed and Quoted In:

The Latest 

Rest in peace to my father, Mark Poster, 1941-2012, a pioneer of media, internet, and information studies, and a great dad.  See his obituary in the LA Times.

Winifred Poster, PhD



Teaching

-- Consulting for the International Labour Organisation on a project with Miriam Cherry, “Analysing the impacts of legislative measures introduced to protect workers on digital labour platforms in the US”

 -- Writing a monograph, Data Labor on the Margins:  Prisons, Villages, and Scammers in Indian ICT Outsourcing, funded by National Science Foundation grant, The Hidden Back Office of Info-Tech: Rural and Prison Sourcing of Information and Communication Technology Labor.  Initial thoughts were presented as:

Technology, Together: Podcast from IIIT Bangalore.  “Political Economies of Transnational Labour, #3.04” (March 28, 2022)

DigiLabour Blog, Brazil, 2020, “Invisible Work and Workers’ Struggles in Digital Contexts: An Interview with Winifred Poster” (Aug 23)