Sessional Instructor
BA Hons. (STU); MA (Concordia); PhD(c) (Queen's, expected 2024)
I am a digital and economic sociologist who studies the dynamics of digital capitalism, examining how technological systems and ideological structures shape people's position in the digital economy and their understanding of their place in it.
My current research explores the platforms, apps, and infrastructures that structure gig labour markets for social media content creators and influencers. These technologies are pitched to aspiring creators as democratizing, allowing anyone to find meaningful work producing social media content for brands they love. However, I find that these technologies create and intensify economic disparities. I examine three different aspects of Canada's creator economy: monetization platforms, which bill themselves as helping creators to get paid what they are worth but put downward pressure on wages; techno-economic knowledge, which aims to help creators navigate the uncertainties of "the algorithm", but disciplines them to be more productive for the platform; and cultural justifications for engaging in creative work, which help creators find meaning in precarious work, but defuses their critiques about alienation, exploitation, and social inequality. While my primary focus is economic inequality, my work also points to how these technologies automate other disparities, for example, by placing a double burden on marginalized creators to prove their worth to companies when their bodies do not conform to those sunk within the brands they are pitching to.
I am also interested in studying the interplay between justification and critique in other dimensions of online creative work, such as in "de-influencing", as well as in local efforts to alleviate Canada's cost-of-living crisis through technical apps and platforms.
Current Courses:
- SOCI 1010-02 Introduction to Sociology (Fall 2024)
Previous Courses:
- SOCI 1010 Introduction to Sociology (Summer 2024, Winter 2024)
- SOCI 3010 Sociological Theory I (Fall 2023)
- SOCI 3020 Sociological Theory II (Winter 2024)