CYBORG WORKERS: Digital Sovereignty at Work - Governance, Resistance and Participation
What does “digital sovereignty” mean, and who is it for?
In a joint event organized at OsloMet by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the Digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence, Work and Employment network (DAISY), Cyborg Workers Collective, and The Norwegian Research School on Digitalisation, Culture and Society (DIGIT), this conference turns its attention to how digital infrastructures and ecosystems are transforming workplaces and their wider economic, social and environmental contexts.
Abstract deadline: 31 March, 2026
When: 14-16 October, 2026
Where: Oslo, Norway
Abstract submission: https://nettskjema.no/a/586378
Travel grants: Limited travel grants are available for early career researchers who do not have access to institutional funding.
Photo: Skjalg Bøhmer Vold/OsloMet
Call for abstracts
Expansive transformations in the development, adoption, and implementation of digitalisation impact conditions of work and life across local to transnational scales. The ability of states, organisations, or individuals to control their own digital infrastructure, data, and technology decisions has become a central issue in global technology policy. The implementation of technological control systems in the workplace, the collection and utilisation of data to monitor and enhance productivity, and the consequent restriction or erosion of workers’ and other affected communities’ participation in decision-making mechanisms raise significant concerns. These issues pertain not only to the resolution of industrial conflicts and the protection of labour rights but also to the broader and evolving relationship between (techno)capital and labour, as well as between tech companies and the state or other regional structures of governance.
This conference responds to a need for a deeper understanding of how shifting power dynamics are influencing the scope for global governance, national control, consultations with trade unions and organised civil society, as well as the conditions for workers’ data autonomy. Multinational companies fracture workers across global supply chains and complex webs of contracting which exceed labour protection frameworks, deskill and intensify work in deploying various technologies of control, as well as capture and commodify data through privatised infrastructures of digital public space. Across such fragmentation of responsibility and centralising of power, questions of governance around democratic control of data and the digitalisation of working life have become a critical concern for researchers, social partners, activists, and policymakers. Beyond the presentist projections of tech determinism, we open a critical discussion on changes, continuities, and turning points in a longer-term view of technological change to contend with contemporary social inequalities embedded in processes of digitalisation.
We invite papers that critically engage with the contested and relational practices informing the development, implementation, and experience of digital technologies in and beyond the workplace. We invite contributions addressing themes which might include, but are not limited to:
Digital sovereignty for workers and working life: Who governs the global digital commons (like the Internet, AI, or cloud computing)? How do issues of digital sovereignty affect workers’ autonomy and data privacy in the workplace (e.g. monitoring, algorithmic management, or remote work platforms)? Who owns and controls the data generated by workers: individuals, employers, or the state, and how does this relate to national digital sovereignty?
Governance and democracy at work: Automation and AI reassign tasks, change skill mixes, and can create precarious or intensified work, even when jobs remain. What agency do workers have therein? What is the power of third parties over employers and workers? What is the role of trade unions in these digitalisation processes? How are other organisations and institutions involved in fostering unionisation or other forms of worker representation in various sectors?
Resistance, Control, Cooperation: How do individuals or collectives challenge, subvert, or refuse technologies of control? In what ways do distinct social movements (e.g. tech worker activism, data justice coalitions, environmental groups) mobilise support and frame their resistance? What are potential points of collaboration across movements? What does digital sovereignty mean from a decolonial or grassroots perspective, rather than a state-centric one? What everyday tactics do individual workers and communities use to resist AI surveillance, data extraction, and algorithmic control at work?
Digitalisation and the changing conditions of production/reproduction: Digital infrastructures and ecosystems are transforming the places and locations in which work and employment take place. Combined with new digitalised working practices, these new patterns of location have complex economic, social and environmental consequences. How do new digitalised working practices influence patterns of urbanisation, regional development, and labour mobility? How do these shifts affect social cohesion, social reproduction, community life, and inclusion in local labour markets?
Invited Plenary Speakers
We are delighted to welcome Professor Joanna Bryson (Professor of Ethics and Technology at The Hertie School of Governance), whose research focuses on improving the governance and ethics of digital technology, and Dr Jamie Woodcock (Senior Lecturer in digital economy at King's College London), who focuses in his research on labour, work, the gig economy, platforms, and resistance.
About the conference
This conference seeks to further advance the reflections initiated at the first meeting of Cyborg Workers 1.0, held at the Aarhus University and continued at the subsequent Cyborg Workers 2.0. Brussels conference, which explored the issues and implications associated with value creation and extraction as defining features of innovation in a broad sense.
For its third edition, Cyborg Workers joins forces with the Digital Artificial Intelligence Symposium (DAISY), an international academic collaboration focused on how AI is transforming work and the Norwegian Research School of Digitalization, Culture and Society. DAISY held its previous two symposiums in Melbourne and Sussex. Building on discussions within both networks, the conference aims to critically extend the debate to other fundamental dimensions - such as participation, resistance and control - that shape both the development of technological processes and the discourses surrounding the past, present and future of work.
Contact
For questions about the conference please contact Olga Gheorghiev
Please feel free to contact the DIGIT coordinator for any practical questions.