Hi,
I’m Jonas Ferdinand.

I’m a sociologist studying how digital capitalism transforms work, culture, and subjectivity.

I’m a visiting researcher in the research group »Globalization, Work, and Production« at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and an associated researcher in the group »Working with Artificial Intelligence« at the Weizenbaum Institute. I’m a doctoral candidate at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg. I work at the intersection of labor, technology, and economics in the video game industry. I analyze how the industry’s evolving institutional framework influences the standardization of creative practices and shapes workers’ subjectivities, and what that means for the nature of creative labor in a rapidly digitizing world.

Curriculum vitae →

01 Research

The central question driving my work: how are platforms, data, and AI changing what work is and who gets paid for it?

Work in the video game industry

My dissertation examines how work is organized in the European video game industry: precarious employment, union organization, and the role of public funding, comparing Germany and the United Kingdom.

Platform economy and »playbour«

From Roblox to TikTok, platforms blur the line between play, creativity, and unpaid labor. I study these new forms of work and ask what regulation they require.

AI and work

Under what conditions do employees and works councils accept technologies such as wearables and AI in the workplace, and what does AI mean for democracy in the world of work?

More about my research →

02 Publications