Funda Ustek Spilda

Funda Ustek Spilda is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London and serves as the South East Asia Programmes Lead. She holds a dual affiliation as a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and contributes to Fairwork, an international research initiative examining technology’s impact on work.

Dr. Ustek Spilda earned her D.Phil in Sociology from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on digital economies, labor dynamics, and gender studies, with particular attention to invisible labor in both informal and digital sectors. She teaches courses on platform economics, AI ethics, and digital development.

Her work explores how workers’ visibility is mediated by technology and societal structures, examining issues like unpaid labor in global digital networks and the ethical implications of AI supply chains. She has presented widely, including a 2025 lecture on invisibility in work across economic systems.

Ustek Spilda is affiliated with the Centre for Digital Culture and the Global Digital Cultures Research Group at King’s, investigating how digital practices circulate globally and transform local contexts. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges sociology, digital humanities, and critical technology studies.