Welcome to my website. I am Dr Aditya Ray, academic and researcher at the School of Geography and Environment at the University of the West of England (UWE) Bristol. My work aims to be cross-disciplinary, situated at the productive intersections of critical economic and urban geographies, political economy, technology and development studies. I employ social science methodologies to analyse how technological transformations influence human society and experience in the context of global challenges such as equitable development, sustainability and democratic governance. Central to my work is an exploration of alternative economic visions that challenge traditional techno-centric growth paradigms and promote pluralism, aiming to broaden mainstream approaches. 

My early research funded by the ESRC (2019-2021) has focused on the labour geographies of India's burgeoning data and knowledge services economy, examining the working lives of those engaged in the Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sectors. Subseuqeuntly, I led a multi-year participatory research project (2020-2023) documenting the experiences of migrant and non-migrant app-based workers on digital platforms like Uber, Zomato and Ola in post-COVID-19 India. This project examined workers' interactions with platform companies, the state, and traditional labour market intermediaries, documenting their strategies for coping with the precarities of gig work during crisis. You can explore the outcomes of this project through my publications and by visiting the illustrating digital precarity page of this website. Having recenty been awarded new grant funding (2025-2027) at the University of the West of England (Bristol) on 'labour and development in AI value chains', I am now extending this research to include global data service workers, logistics workers, third sector organisations, and labour unions through collaborations with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and other national and international partners. Since 2021, I have additionally engaged in research at the Open University, analysing data drawn from a large-scale study on gender and transnational mobility among 'high-skilled' tech workers in UK and India. 

I am committed to fostering openness and cross-disciplinarity in education and research. I teach and supervise students across a range of modules covering topics such as the geographies of globalisation, digital labour, geopolitics of migration, ordinary and global cities, environment and social justice and research methods. I led an action-research project to understand the educational pathways for refugees and asylum seekers in UK higher education and to make the case for the Open University joining the University of Sanctuary network - which was accepted in 2023. I am also proud to be on the editorial board of the Work, Employment and Society Journal that publishes leading international research in economic sociology and industrial relations from a pluralist methodological perspective. 

For more information on my ongoing research projects and publications, please browse this website. If you are interested in these topics or potential academic collaborations, feel free to contact me at: [email protected]