Vili Lehdonvirta is Professor of Technology Policy at the Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland, and Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
Lehdonvirta is an economic sociologist whose research focuses on digital technologies, such as apps, platforms, and marketplaces — how they are governed, how they shape the organisation of economic activities, and with what implications to workers, consumers, businesses, and policy. His research has been published in the Journal of Management, New Media & Society, Sociology, and other leading academic journals.
Lehdonvirta leads the Digital Economic Security Lab (DIESL). He has been awarded three European Research Council grants for studies on the international political economy of digital technologies. His books Cloud Empires and Virtual Economies were published by MIT Press and have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Italian. He is a frequent keynote speaker and has advised the European Commission, the World Bank, the OECD, national governments, firms, and startups on digital policy, infrastructure, and strategy.
Research interests: Digital economy, crowdsourcing, electronic markets, critical infrastructure, cloud computing, data centres, undersea cables, weaponised interdependence, labour relations, digital sovereignty, European Union, Southeast Asia, Japan
