Einladung zum qualitativen Methodengespräch am 23.10.2025

Nur online per Zoom

Der Lehrbereich für qualitative Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung lädt Sie/euch herzlich zum qualitativen Methodengespräch ein.

Dr. Milagros Miceli

Weizenbaum-Institut (Berlin)

A Data Workers’ Inquiry: Recentering Workers’ Epistemic Authority

The invisible labor of data workers, i.e., those who annotate, moderate, and maintain AI systems, underpins the global AI industry. Yet their voices remain largely absent in the research that claims to study them. This talk introduces Workers' Inquiry as a Research Methodology or WIRM, a participatory approach that moves AI research beyond extractive practices toward co-production with workers themselves. Drawing on the tradition of Marxist Workers' Inquiry, WIRM positions workers as community researchers who actively shape the design, interpretation, and framing of research. Dr. Miceli will share how WIRM was developed and implemented in the multi-country Data Workers' Inquiry (DWI) project, where data workers documented diverse contexts of economic, physical, and political precarity. The talk will explore both empirical insights from the DWI project as well as WIRM's theoretical grounding, structural components, and practical execution. Milagros Miceli will conclude by reflecting on the key challenges and tensions of this methodology, and by considering its potential as a framework for worker-led AI research.

Further information
A Data Workers' Inquiry: Recentering Workers' Epistemic Authority
Dr. Milagros Miceli - Weizenbaum Institut Berlin
https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/en/portrait/p/milagros-miceli

Zoom link (23 Oct 25, 4-6pm) https://lmu-munich.zoom-x.de/j/63011513669?pwd=WfwSEJhpqQqBQEtqfxznf8OSqZO1la.1 Meeting-ID: 630 1151 3669 Kenncode: 593186