<div dir="ltr">
















<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>

<p class="MsoNormal">Hi all: </p>

<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>

<p class="MsoNormal">My name is Karen
Gregory—also one of the “helpers” putting together the conference. I’m a
sociologist and I teach labor studies and digital methods at City College of
New York in the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences/Center for
Worker Education. At the moment, I’m drawing on my experience in Instructional
Technology and am <span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">busy building my own
media lab at City College that will bring full-time and adjunct faculty
together to, among other things, draw connections between media and technology,
labor and economics, and the future of higher education.</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal">My research to date has focused on the entanglement of
contemporary spirituality, precarity, and entrepreneurialism with an emphasis
on the role of the laboring body. My dissertation was drawn from over two years
of ethnographic work at an esoteric school in New York City and explores the
parallels between becoming “psychic” and working in the digital economy through
the lens of affective labor and “the con.” <span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">I
was also a co-author with Patricia Clough, Joshua Scannell, and Benjamin Haber
of <a href="http://www.academia.edu/5986819/The_Datalogical_Turn">The Datalogical Turn</a></span><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">, which should be out this year in a collection from
Routledge and </span>I’m currently working on a publication that explores the
relationship <span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">between financialization, digital
materiality, and the metaphysics of abundance.</span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">As I was finishing the
dissertation last semester, I helped found the </span><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><a href="https://digitallabor.commons.gc.cuny.edu/">CUNY Digital Labor Working Group</a></span><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> with <a href="https://digitallabor.commons.gc.cuny.edu/kara-van-cleaf/">Kara Van Cleaf,</a> <a href="https://digitallabor.commons.gc.cuny.edu/andrew-mckinney/">Andrew McKinney</a>, and <a href="https://digitallabor.commons.gc.cuny.edu/tom-buechele/">Thomas Buechele</a>. The Working Group hosts a library and a blog—last semester I hosted
an online forum on the site devoted to Angela Mitropoulos’ <a href="http://digitallabor.commons.gc.cuny.edu/category/contract-contagion/">Contract and Contagion</a>, which may be of interest to some on this list. </span>Our group will be
presenting at the conference, along with <a href="https://paradigm.presswarehouse.com/books/contribDetail.aspx?id=20156">Joshua Scannell</a>, at a roundtable
entitled “The Place, Politics, and Function of Measure” and I will also be on
the roundtable that Dan Greene has coordinated called “Digital Labor in
Crisis.”</p>

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">I'm really looking forward
to the conference and to meeting everyone in person. </span></p>

<div><br></div><div>- Karen </div><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr">Karen Gregory, PhD<br>Lecturer, Sociology<div>Digital Pedagogy & Online Learning<br><div>City College of New York </div><div>Center for Worker Education</div></div></div>
</div>