Funda is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities, and is the South East Asia Programmes Lead. She is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford; and Fairwork, an international action research project that studies the impact of technology on work.

Prior to joining King’s in 2024, Funda previously held research posts at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, London School of Economics and Goldsmiths, University of London. She holds a D.Phil in Sociology from the University of Oxford.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Digital economy
• Digital labour
• Digital carework
• Gender

Teaching

Funda's teaching covers the following topics: platform economics; the political economy of AI; digital development; ethics, fairness and justice in technology; digital care value chains; women, work and technology.

Expertise and public engagement

Funda's work has been featured in a variety of outlets, including podcasts, videos, journalistic pieces and expert panels and interviews.

Selected publications

• Muldoon, James, Callum Cant, Mark Graham, and Funda Ustek Spilda. "The poverty of ethical AI: impact sourcing and AI supply chains." AI & SOCIETY (2023): 1-15.
• Howson, Kelle, Hannah Johnston, Matthew Cole, Fabian Ferrari, Funda Ustek‐Spilda, and Mark Graham. "Unpaid labour and territorial extraction in digital value networks." Global Networks 23, no. 4 (2023): 732-754.
• Bertolini, Alessio, Mark Graham, Mounika Neerukonda, Sanna Ojanperä, Balaji Parthasarathy, Janaki Srinivasan, Pradyumna Taduri, and Funda Ustek-Spilda. "Platformizing informality, one gig at a time." In Platformization and Informality: Pathways of Change, Alteration, and Transformation, pp. 13-45. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023.
• Cole, Matthew, Callum Cant, Funda Ustek Spilda, and Mark Graham. "Politics by automatic means? A critique of artificial intelligence ethics at work." Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 5 (2022): 869114.
• Spilda, Funda Ustek, Kelle Howson, Hannah Johnston, Alessio Bertolini, Patrick Feuerstein, Louise Bezuidenhout, Oğuz Alyanak, and Mark Graham. "Is anonymity dead?." Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation 16, no. 1 (2022): 72-87.