Interdisciplinary in nature, and embrace sociology, economics, demography and development studies

我的研究兴趣是跨学科的，包括社会学、经济学、人口学和发展研究。我特别着迷于这些学科在分析社会分层、家庭结构、不平等和社会网络时相互作用的方式。我的研究目标是评估社会网络如何以及何时加剧或改善社会不平等。与此同时，我打算调查社会网络如何受到日益扩大的不平等的影响。作为社会经济不平等的主要推动者，我对技术和技术变革很感兴趣。除了研究网络驱动和影响技术变革的不同方式，我的目标是探索社会网络是如何被技术进步所塑造的。此外，我对社会资本和社会化过程的问题感兴趣，以及它们如何受到技术变革，最重要的是自动化过程的影响。社会资本的分析与政策制定越来越相关，因为社会资本已被证明与更公平、更民主和更稳定的社会相关。由于重要的政治含义，我认为研究技术变革如何影响和塑造社会资本是至关重要的。在我的论文中，我想把重点放在零工经济上，因为它代表了一个引人注目的例子，在这个行业中，社会化受到了技术进步的严重影响，被定义为“算法管理”。算法管理的概念描述了零工经济典型的自动化过程，在这种过程中，曾经分配给人类的传统（通常是管理）工作角色现在由软件算法填补。在这种背景下，“就业”和“工作场所”的传统概念变得过时，因为零工经济工作者通常完全依赖在线数字中介，而不是任何人的雇员。我的目标是解决面对这种算法的工人的个人反应和看法，以及这种现象对社会化和社会资本的影响。因此，我的研究问题主要是：(i)人们如何感知、反应和与机器人和算法一起工作，这些机器人和算法填补了传统上由主管和同事担任的角色？（ii）这种趋势如何影响社会化进程，并最终影响社会资本？

My research interests are interdisciplinary in nature, and embrace sociology, economics, demography and development studies. I am particularly fascinated by the way these disciplines can interact in the analysis of social stratification, family structures, inequality, and social networks. My research goal is to evaluate how and when social networks exacerbate - or ameliorate - social inequalities. At the same time, I intend to investigate how social networks can be affected by widening inequalities. As a major driver of socio-economic inequality, I am interested in technology and technological change. Besides investigating the different ways through which networks drive and influence technological change, I aim to explore how social networks are being shaped by technological advancement. Moreover, I have an interest for questions of social capital and socialisation processes, and how they are being affected by technological changes, most importantly by automation processes. Analyses of social capital have become increasingly relevant for policy-making, as social capital has been shown to be correlated with fairer, more democratic, and stable societies. Due to the important political implications, I believe it is crucial to study how technological change might impact and shape social capital. In my thesis, I would like to focus on the gig economy, as it represents a striking example of an industry where socialisation has been severely affected by technological advancement, in what has been defined as "algorithmic management". The notion of algorithmic management describes the automation process typical of the gig economy, where traditional (often managerial) work roles once assigned to humans are now filled by software algorithms. In this context, the conventional notions of "employment" and "workplace" become obsolete, as gig economy workers usually rely exclusively on online, digital intermediaries, without being anyone's employee. It is my objective to address the individual responses and perceptions of workers that are confronted with such algorithms - and the impact of this phenomenon on socialisation and social capital. Therefore, my research questions primarily ask: (i) How do people perceive, react to, and work with robots and algorithms filling roles traditionally held bysupervisors and colleagues? And (ii) how does this trend affect socialisation processes, and ultimately, social capital?