INDL-8 Bologna: DiPLab Brings Global Digital Labor Network to Italy’s Academic Heart

As one of the main organizers behind the 8th annual conference of the International Network on Digital Labor (INDL-8), DiPLab is proud to announce that our comprehensive program is now online, setting the stage for September 10-12, 2025, when Bologna will host one of the largest gatherings in digital labor research.

his milestone event brings together a global network of researchers, practitioners, and activists to bridge the critical gap between academic investigation and the lived realities of workers’ struggles worldwide. Through our collaborative partnership with the University of Bologna, Fondazione Di Vittorio, and the International Labor Organization (ILO), we have crafted a program that reflects our commitment to understanding digital work not as an abstract phenomenon but as a concrete set of practices that reshape lives, communities, and economies across the globe.

This year’s theme, “Contesting Digital Labor: Resistance, counter-uses, and new directions for research,” emerges directly from DiPLab’s core mission to promote social change by illuminating the material conditions of the production of AI technologies. In particular, documenting how workers navigate, resist, and reimagine the digital economy’s constraints and opportunities has become a central issue.

We have managed to accommodate nearly 200 oral presentations and posters, drawing speakers from six continents who will engage in discussions that stretch across disciplines and countries, creating the kind of interdisciplinary dialogue that has always been central to DiPLab’s approach.

INDL-8 features keynote speaker Sarah T. Roberts (UCLA), who will examine “The Hydra of Artificial Intelligence: Labor Devaluation and Erosion of Human Agency,” drawing on her research as author of “Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media” and director of UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. María Luz Rodríguez Fernández (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha) will present “Property rights and monetisation of the personal data of platform workers,” based on her work as former ILO Senior Specialist and author of over 200 publications on platform economy labor law. Sandro Mezzadra (University of Bologna) will deliver his talk “Beyond resistance. Digital Labor, Social Cooperation and Infrastructural Struggles,” contributing his expertise in political theory and contemporary capitalism analysis.

The program also features a groundbreaking one-day event with a panel featuring AI data workers. The venue is actually the most original aspect, as the panel will take place inside an actual data center—the Tecnopolo DAMA. This represents an unprecedented opportunity to hear the firsthand accounts of the material conditions and human experiences behing AI, that our research seeks to understand and improve. Moreover, it will be a great opportunity to foster solidarity by establish a dialogue between European, South American, and African new and “legacy” union leaders and community organizers.

The conference’s special union panel includes Joan Kinyua, President of the Data Labelers Association; Felipe Corredor Álvarez, co-founder of Riders x Derechos and former Deliveroo rider with a PhD in Social Psychology; and Kauna Malgwi, co-founder of the Africa Content Moderators Union, who was named among Time’s 100 most influential people in AI for 2024 and testified before the European Parliament on digital platform work conditions.

Beyond traditional academic sessions, we have secured some of the University of Bologna’s most historic venues, situating our contemporary concerns within centuries of scholarly tradition, while our dedicated evening tour will explore Bologna through the lens of its activist movements, connecting past struggles with present-day digital labor organizing.