Arturo Lahera-Sánchez

Principal Investigator

Arturo Lahera-Sánchez is a Co-Principal Investigator for Fairwork Spain, alongside Alberto Riesco. Arturo is Senior Lecturer of the ergonomics & sociology of work at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). He is a member of EGECO Research Group (Employment, Gender & Social Cohesion). 

He has directed and participated in multiple European Union and Spanish research projects analysing working conditions, occupational health and risk assessment, and worker participation.  Arturo has also developed (ethnographic) fieldwork in several productive sectors: Industry 4.0, mechanical engineering and machine tools, telecommunications and call centres, mining, automotive and aeronautics, hospitality, textile manufacturing and disability centres.  

Currently, his main research areas are the digitisation and robotisation of labour processes, and their effects on job quality, the implantation of Industry 4.0 technologies and the gig economy, always from an augmentation approach. Three examples thereof are the following projects: Futures of Work: Industry 4.0, Digitization & Robotization-FINDeR (UCM Specific Research Fund); The impact of digitization on industrial relations: challenges and opportunities-FuWorkTech (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation); Robotization and Work in Wineries at Castilla & Leon Region-ROVIN (University of Valladolid).  

The results of his research have been published in European, Spanish and Latin American journals, as well as in monographs and encyclopedias from international publishers. Arturo is also deputy director of Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales [Spanish Journal of Industrial Relations].  

Arturo has been a visiting professor and visiting fellow at several international universities: Maynooth University (Ireland), Warwick Business School-University of Warwick (UK), University of California Los Angeles, University of California San Diego, New Mexico State University (United States of America), General Sarmiento National University (Argentina); and University of Guadalajara (Mexico). 

He is also interested in ‘industrial folklore’ and ‘labour heritage’ (music and songs, novels and drama, paintings and murals, movies and photography on work and labor movements, industrial heritage…).  

For the Fairwork Project, Arturo coordinates the research methodology in Spain, adjusting Fairwork principles and fieldwork resources for interviewing workers and platform management; assessing platforms’ scores and disseminating the final results.

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