Continuing the tradition of sharing short interviews with visiting researchers and PhD students thorugh Tea in TiP, the second of our three current visitors to sit down for Tea in TiP is Katrine Duus.
RDJ: Hi Katrine, tell us about your project!
KD: My project is concerned with the experiences and motivations for working through app. I am especially interested in the interplay between technology, work, time and values. In Brussels in 2018, I followed both delivery bicycle riders as well as the political discussions regarding freelance work, as well as attempts at organizing among platform workers. I have had an ongoing contact to the field ever since, following the riders I met during my initial fieldwork. I am in the final stage of my PhD, starting to write up. You can read more about the project here: https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/katrine.duus@cas.au.dk
I am placed at the department of Anthropology at Aarhus University. Maja Hojer Bruun is my supervisor. The project is co-funded by AUFF Starting Grant and Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University.
RDJ: What you have been working on here at ITU – is it what you came to do?
KD: I have been thinking about time with the help of both the Ethos Lab and the TiP Salon as well as nice discussions with the wonderful TiPsters. The thinking is reflected in the article I was working on while being here: ‘Riders in time: Exploring the temporal agency of food delivery riders working through an app in Brussels’ that is now submitted to Time & Society
RDJ: What have you learned about academia from visiting another institutional context?
KD: I have learned that research groups can exist in many different forms. I have really enjoyed the active participation in the research activities from all TiPsters. Not least the playfulness and openness that seems to permeate the activities. Also, it has been a welcome challenge to be in a more interdisciplinary setting than I am used to, being exposed to new literature and traditions.
RDJ: How are you handling the pandemic’s effects on your PhD project?
I’ve been experimenting with using screen recordings as an elicitation method with my interlocutors, something I would not have thought of, if it had been possible to go back to the field as first planned. For my own work routines, I have checked in with colleagues via zoom doing writing sessions together. I also reached out to other junior scholars that studied platform work in order to maintain an idea of adhering to a research environment despite the isolatedness that lockdown introduced to our work lives.
RDJ: Where can we read your work – published or forthcoming – or hear you at conferences in the next year or so?
KD: Aside from the article on time and platform work in Time & Society, I will be co-authoring an article on algorithmic management in a special issue in Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv. Also, I hope to see some of you at DASTS or EASA this summer where I will be presenting.
RDJ: Thanks Katrine! Can you leave us with an image that encapsulates your stay?
