Bio
R. Trebor Scholz is a professor at The New School in New York City, a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, and a Visiting Researcher at the Berlin Social Science Center. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Plymouth and focuses on cooperative entrepreneurship in the digital economy. Scholz is widely known for developing the concept of “platform cooperatives”, worker-owned digital platforms promoting economic, social, labor, and environmental justice. A global keynote speaker, he has delivered hundreds of talks, sharing his research with diverse audiences.
His work has earned support from institutions like the European Commission, the Rockefeller Foundation, Google.org, and others. His books, Own This!, which won the Joyce Rothschild Book Award, and Uberworked and Underpaid, have been translated into multiple languages, establishing a new academic subfield of Solidarity Tech.
In 2017, Scholz founded the Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC) at The New School, followed by the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy (ICDE) in 2019. The PCC has driven discussions on digital transformation within the cooperative movement through 10 major global conferences in cities such as Hong Kong, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Thiruvananthapuram, and Mombasa, while influencing policy and legislation in numerous countries. The ICDE fellowship program supports 44 emerging scholars in the digital solidarity economy. Scholz has collaborated with partners across 60 countries, fostering innovations worldwide.