My academic work takes an interdisciplinary approach to questions of social reproduction, technology, and capitalism, drawing on social theory, political economy, and science and technology studies. My research is grounded in the literatures of Feminist Marxism, Racial Capitalism, and Post-Capitalism, with a current focus on media, technology, and design in Platform Capitalism.
I also have significant academic teaching experience. In 2022-2023 I joined the teaching team in Digital Humanities at Kings College London, leading two weekly seminars on the Digital Politics module during the Winter Term. I lecture regularly on the module Bodies, Identities, Futures at University West London, and in 2025 I am convening and curating my own 20-credit level 7 MA module at UWL, entitled Design in the Digital Economy.
Research
2021 – Present: PhD at the University of West London.
I am currently studying for a PhD in Media at the London School of Film, Media and Design, University of West London. In September 2021 I was the only applicant to be awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship for PhD funding, and began studying under the supervision of Professor Helen Hester.
My thesis: Designing Platform Capitalism: An Interface Ethnography of Trust in Platform Care, deals with the political and socio-economic aspects of design in ubiquitous digital technologies. It takes digital labour platforms, as fundamental socio-technical artefacts of modern life in the Global North, and asks what their design can tell us about the reproduction of modern capitalist social relations.
It is frequently noted in the platform labour scholarship that the “frictionless” design of platform interfaces – those from which you hail a ride, order a takeaway or book an on-demand nanny – mask a complex network of friction-full labour relations (Agre, 1995; Srnicek, 2016, Leszczynski, 2019; Burkhardt et al, 2024). Much has been written on the processes of invisibilisation and exploitation that make the platform economy possible (Gruszka & Böhm, 2022; Gent, 2024), and many attempts have been made to visibilise and valorise the experiences of platform workers, upon which our modern digital economy depends (Jones, 2021; Muldoon, 2022; Gebrial, 2023, Woodcock & Hughes, 2023). Less attention has focused however, on the design of digital labour platforms themselves.
Why and how has the frictionless digital interface emerged as the hegemonic design practice of Platform Capitalism, and what are the implications of such design ideals in the context of highly complex socio-economic relations? Taking case studies from the world of platform care in London, my thesis centres the concept of trust as a primary site of analysis. It focuses on the particular role of trust as a relational process in the execution of care work, and examines how Platform Capitalism mediates the complexity of this sociality through techniques of Reductive Design. In doing so, my thesis illuminates the role of platform design in structuring capitalist relations of social reproduction and opens a generative discussion on pathways toward justice-oriented redesign of digital labour platforms.
Read an excerpt from the draft PhD here.
2017-2018: MA at University College London (UCL)
In September 2018 I graduated with Distinction, and at the top of my cohort, from an MA in Modern European History at UCL. I received first-class grades for modules on Social Theory (74), Politics and Ethics (75), Global Politics (75), and Questions of European Integration (74). My thesis Automated Capital and ‘The Social Chasm’ (72) critiqued modern “automation theory” using a Marxist lens, and examined the future of capitalist wage-relations in light of automation technologies. This entailed an extensive review of modern Marxian post-work and post-capitalist literature, laying the theoretical groundwork for my PhD research.
2014 – 2017: BA at The University of Nottingham
In July 2017 I graduated with a 2:1 in joint honours History and Ancient History from the University of Nottingham. My specialist subject focused on the history of European peace movements 1815-2016, and my dissertation built on this work to analyse 20th century British foreign policy in the context of European integration.
Teaching
- 2025: Module convenor, Design in the Digital Economy (MA), University of West London.
- 2022-Present: Guest lecturer, Bodies, Identities, Futures, University of West London.
- 2022–2023: Seminar leader, Digital Politics, King’s College London.
Freddie Stuart 