DIESL members Vili Lehdonvirta, Kaarlo Liukkonen, Kunhan Li, Stefka Schmid, and Markus Holmgren recently participated in the annual conference of The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), held this year in Bordeaux. The event brought together scholars of socioeconomics and political economy and also paid special attention to digital economies in a post globalisation order.
Kaarlo Liukkonen presented his research on how countries’ digital dependencies on U.S. Big Tech email providers have diverged in the years since the Snowden revelations, and Kunhan Li presented his work on how governments use public procurement policy to influence where data centres are built.
Stefka Schmid presented her ongoing research on the changing strategic relationships between U.S. tech firms and the state, arguing that modular partnerships between actors are crucial to the cloud production network. She participated in a book salon on “The AI Matrix. Profits, Power, Politics” (by Daniel Mügge, Regine Paul, and Vali Stan), and Markus Holmgren presented his work on how the drive for “sovereign AI” running on foreign cloud infrastructure is reshaping global technological interdependence.
In addition to co-authoring research, Vili Lehdonvirta chaired three panels addressing the influence of Big Tech, digital sovereignty and cloud, as well as global comparisons of digital policies. He further served as co-organiser of Network J: Digital Economy and initiated a lunch gathering to network, organised by Kunhan Li.
Additionally, Kaarlo Liukkonen and Stefka Schmid each chaired a panel on platform labour, focusing on local and collective governance, respectively.
Overall, the conference was very fruitful for the DIESL group. The annual meeting enabled them to learn about recent academic works and interact with brilliant scholars from a variety of universities.
Link to presentations:
- “Diverging digital dependencies: Post-Snowden changes in countries’ reliance on U.S. Big Tech’s email” (Kaarlo Liukkonen, Vili Lehdonvirta): https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/74989/submission/2767
- “The Procurement State: How Governments Shape the Geography of Data Centres through Public Procurement” (Kunhan Li, Vili Lehdonvirta): https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/74989/submission/874
- “From globalists to nationalists? US tech firms’ strategic relationships with the state” (Stefka Schmid, Vili Lehdonvirta): https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/74989/submission/483
- “Sovereign AI on foreign cloud? How the drive for sovereignty is reshaping global interdependence” (Markus Holmgren, Vili Lehdonvirta): https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/74989/submission/1214