Cheryll Soriano to headline annual NU-Q Lecture on Global South

Doha, Qatar - Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) has announced that communications scholar Cheryll Soriano will be the keynote speaker for the fourth annual NU-Q Lecture on the Global South. The lecture, titled "Politics of Suturing: Infrastructural Labour and Survival in Platform Work," will delve into the challenges faced by workers in platform-mediated economies, with a focus on the Philippines and other communities in the Global South.

Soriano will also facilitate a workshop for NU-Q faculty and #IAS_NUQ Global Postdoctoral Scholars, centered on researching and writing about digital platforms and platform labor from perspectives rooted in the Global South. This will be followed by a mentoring lunch with undergraduate fellows.

As a scholar of communications and new media, Soriano's work examines how digital platforms are reshaping labor, livelihoods, and everyday economic practices. She investigates the impact of digital economies on workers, offering a counter-narrative to the dominant narratives from the Global North. Soriano serves as Principal Investigator for Fairwork Philippines, an international research network that evaluates gig platforms on fair pay, conditions, contracts, management, and representation.

Her research has highlighted the concept of "sachet capitalism," which describes the relationship between digital labor and the Philippines' familiar sachet economy, illustrating how platform economies make gig work accessible while allowing digital and financial technology companies to extract value from informal labor.