m. six silberman

I am a human rights researcher, trade unionist, educator, and writer.

All my work is animated by the conviction that ‘we can have nice things’: healthy organisations and governance are possible; healthy, fulfilling, valuable work is possible; healthy relationships to work, technology, our organisations and communities, the non-human world, one another, and ourselves—all these, though neither simple nor easy, are possible and worth striving for.

Research and trade union work

My research and trade union work focuses on human and worker rights under digitalisation. It addresses especially the rights of workers on digital labour platforms and under algorithmic management. It also engages broader questions of worker and labour rights in the context of information technologies, including ‘artificial intelligence.’

In the course of this work I have contributed to the development of technologies, institutions, and legal instruments to establish and protect the rights of digital platform workers, including Turkopticon (2008-2020), the Ombuds Office of the Crowdsourcing Code of Conduct (2017-2020), the EU Platform Work Directive (adopted 2024), and the ILO Convention on Decent Work in the Platform Economy (adopted 2026).

I have also published research on information technology and sustainability and ecological economics.

Institutionally, I work as a:

• Postdoctoral researcher in the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford; and
• Consultant on worker rights under digitalisation to the International Trade Union Confederation

Teaching

My teaching explores the relationships between institutions, individuals, and technologies. It is motivated by practical questions such as:

• How can we can develop healthy relationships to work?
• How can we do valuable, meaningful, psychologically sustainable work? and
• How can we develop and sustain healthy organisations and communities?

I draw on diverse conceptual frameworks and traditions in the social and psychological sciences, including self-determination theory, the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, and liberation psychology.

My teaching is currently done primarily in my role as the lecturer in sociotechnical systems at Newspeak House (London College of Political Technology).

Other

I also write fantasy and science fiction exploring these themes, and am a tarot practitioner working in the human rights tradition.

Selected short fiction:

• ‘The unseen order’, 2021

Degrees

In progress, MSc Career Coaching and Coaching Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London.

PhD, Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine, 2015.

MS Engineering, Arts Computation Engineering, University of California, Irvine, 2009.

BS, Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, 2007.