First edition of the summer school

Thomas is a social scientist, based at Paderborn University in Germany. His research and teaching focuses on critical social theory, political economy of media and communication, digital media and society, digital labour and capitalism, as well as universities and academic labour.

Jernej is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a Researcher at the Social Communication Research Centre based at the same institution. He served as the head of the Department of Journalism between 2018 and 2021. Between 2014 and 2015, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (Czechia).

Paško is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Development and International Relations in Zagreb, Croatia. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Zagreb. He is the author (with Toni Prug and Mislav Žitko) of The Political Economy of Digital Monopolies (Bristol University Press, 2021), Sociology of Media (Jesenski and Turk, 2020 – in Croatian), and editor (with Jaka Primorac and Bjarki Valtysson) of Technologies of Labour and the Politics of Contradiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

Benjamin is the Director of Graduate Studies and an Associate Professor of Media Studies at the Reynolds School of Journalism and Center for Advanced Media Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. He also serves as Co-Chair of the Political Economy Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research. His research is grounded in the political economy of communication tradition, with a specific focus on free and open-source software and the digital commons. He is the author of Incorporating the Digital Commons (University of Westminster Press, 2020) and co-editor of Global Media Giants (Routledge, 2017).

Jaka works as a Scientific Advisor at the Department for Culture and Communication, Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO), Zagreb, Croatia. Her research interests intersect the fields of sociology of culture, sociology of media and communications and sociology of work. Her work is centred on the relationship between culture and economy, with the particular focus on cultural and creative labour issues and implications for cultural and media policies.

Toni is Assistant professor of sociology at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka. He is the author (with P. Bilić and M.Žitko) of "The Political Economy of Digital Monopolies: Contradictions and Alternatives to Data Commodification" (Bristol University Press, 2021). His primary research interest is production of wealth beyond commodities, with the focus on egalitarian determinations of wealth. He is a former Free Software engineer of networks and infrastructure.

Sašo is Research Associate at the Social Communication Research Centre of the University of Ljubljana. Main research interests include critical political economy of communication, labour process in news organizations and working conditions of newsworkers, as well as the history of the New International Information and Communication Order. Socialist and union man.