Struan Barr

Research Student

Struan Barr is affiliated with Department of People and Organisations.

You can email Struan Barr directly; but for media enquiries pleases contact a member of The Open University's Media Relations team.

Biography

As a PhD candidate Struan is seeking to understand the ways in which algorithmic management technologies, and their production, shape the lived experiences of platform workers.

His academic research draws on his professional experience as a member of staff at the UK based food delivery platform Deliveroo from 2017-2021. Here Struan worked as a User Researcher with the Technology team, advocating for the needs of consumers, restaurant partners and food delivery workers within the software production process. His applied research informed the design of the company's algorithmic management apparatus, including elements such as dynamic rider fee pricing and the system of tiered access to work.

Struan holds a BDes in Product Design from the Glasgow School of Art (2012) and an MA in Visual Sociology from Goldsmiths, University of London (2016) where he explored applications of studio-based image and object making practices as social research methods and devices for the public communication of social knowledge.

Current Research

Resisting the development of precarity: a workers’ inquiry of algorithmic management technology’s makers and users

A growing segment of the contemporary workforce sources, undertakes and receives payment for their work through online platforms, with little or no direct contact with human representatives of the company. Instead, the activity of these workers is routed through algorithmic software technologies which enact management of the labour process via encoded rules and affordances, defined by platforms. Algorithmic management technologies are continually tested, refined, and extended by their makers, leading to regular changes in conditions for platform workers.

This research will investigate the ways in which software production practices shape the lived experience of geographically-tethered platform workers, paying particular attention to opportunities for worker resistance and participation within the development of algorithmic management technologies. The project will achieve these aims using a combination of ethnography, workers inquiry and inventive sociological practice, resulting in both academic and public-facing outcomes.

This research is funded by the ESRC via the Leadership and Organisational Governance pathway of the Grand Union Doctoral Partnership studentship (2021 cohort).

Supervisors