Helping shape the future of work - Placement with Autonomy
This placement is available to CHASE funded students (in receipt of a CHASE studentship) only.
You must still be receiving your stipend when the placement starts and the placement must have finished before your PhD thesis is submitted for examination.
You will be paid by extension of your stipend. Your funding end date will be extended by the number of months the placement runs for (adjusted for part time hours if necessary).
You can claim support with additional costs, such as travel and accommodation costs.
Please read the guidance notes contained in the CHASE placement application form before applying for this or any other placements offered through this scheme.
CHASE is partnering with the think tank Autonomy to offer exciting opportunities for doctoral researchers to engage in the world of innovative and radical policy.
For up to six months, doctoral graduates can work with the Autonomy team on developing new, ambitious research projects that aim to produce the policies necessary for our society to mitigate the ‘crisis of work’ that we are currently experiencing. Some indicative research questions that guide our work are:
How do we deal with automation technologies in the coming years?
How do work and the climate crisis intersect?
How can we guard against the precarity that comes with the ‘gig economy’?
How do we sediment gender equality into the world of work?
Placements at Autonomy offer an opportunity to garner new research skills, learn how the policy world operates, help shift the Overton Window and potentially make public interventions into the debate about the future of work. You will have the chance to work with our wider research network, including leading academics and other voices that are at the heart of contemporary debates (see our website for more details as to who this might be).
You will be working in small teams, with a diversity of skills brought to bear on a problem: we want to bring architects in conversation with political theorists, policy specialists in conversation with researchers of AI. Diversity in approach will bring out a truly innovative project, beyond the grey documents of your average think tank report.
If you are interested in engaging with CHASE’s placement scheme with Autonomy, then email info@autonomy.work with a short description of your doctoral research alongside a short paragraph regarding which of Autonomy’s research strands interest you most. We can arrange a meeting and discuss details then.
Who are Autonomy and what do we do?
Autonomy is a radical, independent think tank that promotes and articulates a world of work that moves beyond precarity, low pay, overwork, mass unemployment and lack of worker democracy. We want to know what the future of work might be, but we also want to articulate what the future of work should be for our societies. We are influenced by heterodox political economy, including Marxism, but also recognise that work is not simply an economic terrain, and involves cultural and political elements all the way down. Unlike most think tanks, we engage with the wider meanings of ‘work’ beyond mere employment.
We put out research papers, policy proposals and other outputs on a range of work-related topics, to be used by journalists, activists, unions and political parties. We regularly appear in the news media as the radical and progressive voice on the future of work, from local radio stations to the BBC, from Al Jazeera to London’s LBC, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail. Our public presence helps us shift the narrative – and the political agenda – around work, allowing us to push a narrative of worker democracy and freedom.
One of Autonomy’s ongoing aims has been to translate excellent academic work into public interventions into the debate around the future of work; research with impact. Towards this goal, we have congregated some of the best minds in the field as part of our research network and advisory board.
Our main interventions came in 2019, when we published the largest report – to our knowledge – in existence on the topic of working time reduction. Described as a ‘vital contribution’ by Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, it was widely endorsed by trade unions, leading labour economists as well as international voices such as Die Linke’s Katja Kipping.
Our research strands for 2020, from which placed students are encouraged to identify interest are as follows. These strands often intersect and students working on a project will most likely engage with a number of them during their placement:
The Control of Workers and Worker Control
Work intensification and speed up: what is the present and future of technological tracking, evaluating or speed up in the modern British workplace?
● How does workplace discipline get actualised, who commands this discipline and what concrete effects do they have on workers?
Conversely, we also want to explore possibilities of worker control and/or resistance.
● How can decision-making around labour-saving technology involve workers on a practical basis?
2. A Welfare State for the 21st Century
Our current welfare system is outdated, disciplinary and falling apart at the seems. Universal Credit has been shown to be a failure, even on the government’s own assessment. We need to design a better system.
● Do we need a basic income, rather than means-tested benefits?
● What would new welfare spaces look like? What is the Job Centre after the Job Centre?
3. Our Automated Future: the future of technology and its potential for freedom
The future will be automated, but who will that benefit? Policy needs to be in place to make sure the gains from advanced technologies can be shared evenly across populations.
● What is the future of automation technologies and can they be a force for good?
● How can government, trade unions and individuals deal with the huge potential of current and near-future automation technologies?
● What can the history of automation tell us - or warn us - about its deployment within industries?
● What kinds of technology are we really talking about here? Software bots, driverless cars, retail software, etc.
4. Leisure Beyond Consumption
People are getting older, and our working weeks are (hopefully) going to be shorter in the future: what does leisure look like in the next 20 - 30 years?
● How do we make leisure less carbon-intensive and less commodified?
● What would a public infrastructure for leisure look like?
5. Flexibility and Precarity: making the ‘gig economy’ work for the worker
The ‘gig economy’ includes some of the most harmful and exploitative employment practices in the UK. How can this be remedied?
● Is flexibility always a bad thing?
● How do we tackle the bogus classification of some workers as ‘self-employed’?
● Is the ‘gig economy’ here to stay?