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From coworking to competing? Business models and strategies of UK coworking spaces beyond the COVID-19 pandemic
This paper examines the growth of the UK coworking space (CWS) sector in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on data from a multi-year study comprising 44 interviews with CWS owners, managers, and other key economic actors. The paper offers a novel contribution by drawing on critical political [...]
Digital entrepreneurship on retail platforms: A way to formalise employment for young people in Nigeria and the UK
This study investigates the opportunities and barriers digital retail platforms offer to enable young people’s entrepreneurship as a sustainable and formal income stream in Nigeria and the United Kingdom (UK). This innovative comparison sheds light on how these platforms might alleviate high levels of youth unemployment and provide sources [...]
Employers’ Digital Practices at Work Survey: First Findings
There are significant gaps in our understanding of how employers in the United Kingdom adopt and use artificial intelligence powered tools and software. This report provides a comprehensive analysis of a nationally representative survey of business establishments in the United Kingdom conducted between November 2021 and June 2022. The [...]
Online but still falling behind: measuring barriers to internet use ‘after access’
UK, US, and EU internet access statistics show over 95%, 93% and 90% of individuals online respectively. Yet during the Covid-19 pandemic, many children missed out on essential schooling, and people struggled to access government assistance as services shifted online. At first the co-existence of near universal connectivity and [...]
Black, Brown and Asian cultural workers, creativity and activism: The ambivalence of digital self-branding practices
How do cultural and creative workers respond to racism and the politics of representation and respectability in the digital age? In what ways do they engage in forms of community-building and solidarity-making, while managing pressures to build digital presence and personal brands? This article seeks to address these questions [...]
Stepping stones or trapdoors? Paid and unpaid graduate internships in the creative sector
Policy discourse on graduate internships rests on the assumption that, paid or unpaid, they improve the employability of interns. Employing data from a survey of UK creative and mass communications graduates, surveyed two to six years after graduation, this article examines the impact of graduate internships on subsequent job [...]
From ‘making up’ professionals to epistemic colonialism: Digital health platforms in the Global South
Platforms have been studied in terms of their impact on knowledge production and generation of social value. Little however is known about the significance of the knowledge they transfer to the recipient communities—often in faraway countries of the Global South—or its potential perceived colonizing effects. Our study explores the [...]
The changing shape of the Indian recorded music industry in the age of platformisation
Scholars have explored the impact of technological developments on the livelihoods of musicians before digitalisation and in the contemporary age of music streaming platforms. However, a striking gap exists with respect to the Indian music industries which have been conspicuously ignored by scholarship on cultural work. This article contributes [...]
Horses for Courses: Subject Differences in the Chances of Securing Different Types of Graduate Jobs in the UK
Analysis of the 2010/11 Longitudinal Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey shows that overly-simplistic conceptions of graduate success underestimate the value of obtaining a degree in some subjects. Using a skills-based classification of graduate jobs the research finds that maths and vocationally-oriented subjects associated with higher earnings returns [...]
Gender Inequalities in Digital India: A survey on digital literacy, access, and use
This paper reports the main findings from a survey on gender inequalities in digital literacy, use, and access among youth (18-25 years) in three parts of India – Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar. In addition to gender, the survey was attentive to other inequalities too in its enquiry about [...]