Jessica Kate Crowell

My research focuses on how digital technology is changing work, particularly in poor and working class urban communities. My research interests include the gig economy; digital inequality; urban ethnography; and, more broadly, the intersection of media and social justice issues.

 

My federally funded dissertation is entitled, “Liquid Labor, Precarious Lives: An Urban Ethnography of Online Work and Digital Inequality.” This ethnography follows the economic lives of working parents in Philadelphia’s KEYSPOT project, a network of digital access and skills programs funded by the U.S. Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). As low-income parents faced impediments to locating good formal sector jobs (impediments such as lack of access to affordable childcare), some embraced informal sector work, promoting services like modeling or caricature drawing, or selling digital goods like e-books. I argue that the rise and frequency of these flexible, informalized arrangements signals a radically changing relationship between technology, labor, and care support in the United States.

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Most broadly, my goal as a scholar is to produce critical academic research that can influence policy and also bring attention to social justice issues. ​

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