Oğuz Alyanak

Postdoctoral Researcher

Oğuz Alyanak is an anthropologist and a postdoctoral researcher in the Fairwork project at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford.

He has been a part of the Fairwork network for nearly four years. During the first half of his tenure, he was in Berlin to direct Fairwork research in Germany as the country lead. He then joined the central team in Oxford to take on additional responsibilities, which include: guiding research as a country liaison  and serving as an external scorer of platforms or strategic reviewer of reports; serving as a platform liaison for Gorillas (now Getir) and Wolt; creating and updating the Welcome Package for local research teams, which includes key documents such as interview guides, ethical compliance documents, best (management) practices, letter templates, communications guidelines, and the country report template; liaising with the communications team to prepare social media materials to foster public engagement; collaborating with local teams in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa to organise meetings with stakeholders and co-author policy briefs (e,g., on the EU Directive on Platform Work, and on African Platform Workers Representatives); collaborating with researchers in Fairwork network to co-author articles and book chapters, pursuing funding opportunities, and holding meetings with stakeholders to extend our outreach; co-leading the Workers’ Centre to oversee initiatives such as posters, pamphlets, and regional union and worker organisation meetings; ensuring that Fairwork research complies with guidelines set by the Central University Research Ethics Committee; guiding Fairwork research on AI-mediated work, such as BPOs.

 

Selected Publications:

• Under Review. T. Lopez-Ayala, K. Jesnes, O. Alyanak, and Z. Karlıdağ. “Building Labour Power in the Platform Economy: A Comparative Analysis of Worker Struggles in the German and Norwegian Food Delivery Sector.” New Technology, Work and Employment.
• Under Review. O. Alyanak, A. Bertolini, J. Valente, F. Ustek Spilda, R. Warrin, and M. Graham. “Action-Oriented Research: The Fairwork Project.” SAGE Handbook of Digital Labour.
• 2023. O. Alyanak, C. Cant, T. Lopez Ayala, A., Badger, and M. Graham. “Platform Work, Exploitation, and Migrant Worker Resistance: Evidence from London and Berlin.” The Economic and Labour Relations Review 34(4): 667-688.
• 2022. F. Ustek Spilda, A. Bertolini, O. Alyanak, K. Howson, and M. Graham. “Gender and Carework Platform Operational Models: Setting a Research Agenda.” The Digital Future Society. 2022
• 2022. F. Ustek Spilda, K. Howson, H. Johnston, A. Bertolini, P. Feuerstein, L. Bezuidenhout, O. Alyanak, and M. Graham. “Is Anonymity Dead? Doing Critical Research on Digital Labor Platforms through Platform Interfaces.” Work Organization, Labour & Globalization 16(1): 72-87.
• 2022. O. Alyanak, Z. Karlıdağ. “Why Germany Continues to Fail its Migrant Workers.” Jacobin.
• 2020. O. Alyanak. “Chronic, not Crisis: Why We Need More than Sympathy to Talk About Workers Health amid the Pandemic.” Society for the Anthropology of Work.