Biography
Vili Lehdonvirta is an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. His research is focused on digital technologies, such as apps, platforms, and marketplaces — how they are governed, how they shape the organization of economic activities, and with what implications to workers, consumers, businesses, and policy.
He is the principal investigator of iLabour, a major research project on online freelancing and the gig economy, funded by the European Research Council. He also leads research projects on online labour markets’ effects in rural areas and crowd workers’ skill development. Lehdonvirta is a Hugh Price Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, an associate member of the Department of Sociology, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, London, where he co-convenes the Protocol Governance interest group member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on the Online Platform Economy and the High-Level Expert Group on Digital Transformation and EU Labor Markets.
Lehdonvirta holds a PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Turku (2009) and a MSc from the Helsinki University of Technology (2005). Previously he worked at the London School of Economics, the University of Tokyo, and the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. Before his academic career, he worked as a game programmer. He authored and published numerous academic papers (Google Scholar).
In his previous research Lehdonvirta was interested in the critical look at the Bitcoin and blockchain. His research of virtual goods, virtual consumption and digital games were summarized in Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis, published by MIT Press.
Lehdonvirta sits in the editorial boards of the following journals: Policy & Internet, The Information Society, Electronic Commerce Research and the Journal of International Business Policy. He has advised companies, policy makers, and international organizations in Europe, US and Japan.
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