Dr. Rafael Grohmann

Person

Rafael Grohmann is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies (Critical Platform Studies) at the University of Toronto, Canada. During his fellowship at the Weizenbaum Institute, Grohmann will conduct a research project on how workers are learning to govern data in tech and delivery cooperatives and collectives in Brazil and Argentina. The focus of the fellowship is to theorize about this learning process, going beyond the dominant frameworks around data governance and data literacy. 

His research focuses on platform labor in Latin America, in topics such as platform cooperativism, worker-owned platforms e data work. Currently, he is working on a book project focused on the ways workers are failing and learning to govern digital technologies. The notion of failure, from an anti-capitalist framework, is one of the core concepts of the book, in order to understand the experimental, out of place, incomplete movements of Latin American workers in their struggles around platform labour. Grohmann also is a principal investigator in a research on worker-owned platforms and intersectionality.

Rafael Grohmann is leader of DigiLabour initiative and researcher of Fairwork and Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab (P-WILL) projects. He is one of the founding editors of Platforms & Society journal. He is also co-director of Critical Digital Methods Institute, and he will be a 2024-2025 Faculty Fellow at Queer and Trans Research Lab, Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.