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Green Templeton College

Professor Mark Graham

Professor of Internet Geography, Oxford Internet Institute

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Academic profile

Oxford Internet Institute

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About

Mark Graham is Professor of Internet Geography at the Oxford Internet Institute, a Senior Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, a Research Affiliate in the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, a Research Associate at the Centre for Information Technology and National Development in Africa at the University of Cape Town, a Visiting Researcher at the Berlin Social Science Centre and a Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE) at The New School.

Professor Graham's research examines how digital technologies intersect with geographic contexts, transforming work, value chains and inequalities on a global scale. He asks who ultimately benefits – and who is excluded – when the places in which we live and work become more deeply integrated with digital systems. Professor Graham focuses particularly on data workers at the economic periphery and the working conditions they face. He also leads the Fairwork action research initiative, which evaluates companies and encourages adherence to fair labour standards.

Professor Graham has contributed extensively to policy development for organizations and governments worldwide, serving as an appointed expert for the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, a Task Force Coordinator for the 2024 G20’s Task Force on 'New Digital Technologies for SDGs and Decent Work' and a member of the UK’s DFID Digital Advisory Panel (2014–2016). His research has informed the World Bank and UNCTAD’s major reports, and he has presented to various high level advisory committees – including the FCDO’s Technology and Geopolitics Roundtable, the G20 Working Group on Development and the International Telecommunications Union. Through these engagements, Professor Graham has helped shape digital development strategies and labour policies across Europe, Africa and beyond.

Professor Graham's most recent book, Feeding the Machine, rips away AI’s veneer to reveal the global production networks that sustain it – a hidden labour force of millions enduring appalling conditions so these technologies can exist. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of fieldwork over more than a decade, it presents a look at the organizations that exploit human labour and collective intelligence to fuel AI’s relentless appetite for data. The book challenges the power structures that keep these workers invisible, showing how AI operates like an extraction machine – churning through ever-larger datasets while concealing the people whose backs it is built upon. The Financial Times has described Feeding the Machine as ‘a call to arms to take control over our digital futures: build worker power, hold big tech accountable, and create a better understanding of how these systems work.’ The book has been translated into Chinese, German, Korean, Russian, Italian and Spanish.

Expertise

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Digital labour
  • Economic geography
  • Economic development
  • Digital inequality
  • Outsourcing
  • Internet
  • Digital economy
  • International development
  • Google
  • Wikipedia
  • Future of work

Selected publications

Media experience

Professor Mark Graham's research has appeared in hundreds of media outlets around the world (e.g. featured in The Economist, The New York Times, The Telegraph, Die Zeit, Wired, The Washington Post, CNN, ITV). He also occasionally writes for The Guardian.

Recent media work

Languages

English