Vili Lehdonvirta is Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and Professor of Technology Policy at the Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland. He leads the Digital Economic Security Lab (DIESL). He has been awarded three European Research Council grants for studies on the international political economy of digital technologies. His books on Cloud Empires and Virtual Economies are published by MIT Press and translated to Chinese, Japanese, and Italian. He is a frequent keynote speaker and has advised the European Commission, the World Bank, the OECD, national governments, firms, and startups on digital policy, infrastructure, and strategy.
Lehdonvirta’s current research focuses on the geopolitics and geoeconomics of digital infrastructures. His GEOCLOUD research project maps the evolution of the world’s cloud computing infrastructure, who owns it, how much societies depend on it, and how it can be shaped by policy and corporate strategy. His Political Geography of AI Infrastructure research project maps the world’s AI compute, a key bottleneck in AI system development and deployment. Lehdonvirta’s group uses both conventional social science research methods as well as novel computational approaches to collect data and model policy impacts.
Lehdonvirta’s latest book Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control was shortlisted for the Association of American Publishers’ 2023 PROSE Award. “It is a highly accessible and refreshingly original book, and a must-read for anyone interested in our digital past, present, or future” (Regulation & Governance). Cloud Empires was adopted as a textbook in undergraduate and graduate courses in organization studies, political theory, and economic sociology. From 2018 to 2021 Lehdonvirta served on the European Commission’s Expert Group on the Online Platform Economy, advising policy makers on platform regulation and governance.
From 2015 to 2021 Lehdonvirta led the iLabour research project, a major investigation on the implications of digital platforms to labour markets and global development. One of the project’s outputs was the Online Labour Index, an automated statistics production system adopted by researchers, journalists, and international organizations. At the project’s conclusion the system was transferred to the International Labour Organization. According to a 2021 bibliometric analysis, Lehdonvirta co-authored the top two most cited studies in gig economy research. From 2018 to 2019 Lehdonvirta served on the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Digital Transformation and EU Labour Markets, advising policy makers on issues such as access to platform data.
Lehdonvirta is a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, an associate member of the Department of Sociology, Oxford, and a former Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, London. He co-organizes the Digital Economy Network of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Information Society and Socio-Economic Review. From 2013 to 2018 he was editor of the journal Policy & Internet. In 2022-2023 and 2024-2025 he served on the European Research Council’s Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Grants panel.
Lehdonvirta holds a PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Turku (2009) and an MSc in Information Networks from the Helsinki University of Technology (2005), and studied law at the National University of Singapore (2023-2024). He previously worked at the London School of Economics, the University of Tokyo, and the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. In 2020 he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. Before his academic career Lehdonvirta worked as a software developer.
Professor Lehdonvirta does not have capacity to take on new DPhil students at this time, but would nonetheless be interested in hearing from highly motivated candidates whose proposals are closely aligned with his current areas of research, as described above. Candidates should demonstrate an ability to ground their research in social/political/economic theory and to conduct rigorous empirical research, whether quantitative or qualitative.
Critical infrastructure, cloud computing, data centres, undersea cables, weaponized interdependence, digital sovereignty, European Union, Southeast Asia, Japan
By Vili Lehdonvirta
Tech giants like Amazon, eBay and Apple currently rule the Internet like autocrats. Digital economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our lives and proposes a new way forward.
By Vili Lehdonvirta and Edward Castronova
This book introduces the basic concepts of economics into the game developer's toolkit. It explains how the basics of economics—markets, institutions, and money—can be used to create or analyze economies based on artificially scarce virtual goods.
This programme supports research on AI, Government and Policy.
The shift to cloud represents a reversal of the 1980s personal computing revolution: computation is moving from personal devices back into large, centralized facilities. This project seeks to understand the economic drivers of this reversal.
This project aims to map where in the world the data centers that make up the computational infrastructure of AI research are located and who owns them. It will also investigate government policies aimed at shaping this geography.
In the past five years, I have received research funding (in approximate order of significance) from the European Research Council, the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, the Hans Böckler Foundation, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, the International Labour Organization, and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.
In the past five years I have been a member of the Academic Advisory Board of Demos Helsinki, served on the European Commission’s Expert Group on the Online Platform Economy and the High-Level Expert Group on Digital Transformation and EU Labour Markets, and consulted for the OECD Working Party on Artificial Intelligence Governance (AIGO).
I conduct my research in line with the University's academic integrity code of practice.
With Professor Vili Lehdonvirta
Watch Prof. Vili Lehdonvirta deliver his talk "Cloud empires’ physical footprint" at the Digital Governance Research Colloquium at the Hertie School Centre for Digital Governance.
With Professor Vili Lehdonvirta
Lessons from a Social and Political Theory
With Professor Vili Lehdonvirta
In this talk about his new book, Professor Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our everyday lives.
With Professor Vili Lehdonvirta
In this talk about his new book, Professor Lehdonvirta considers how online economic empires have developed, and how "digital burghers" are pushing back.
Cedefop’s CrowdLearn study is the first to examine skills development and skill matching practices in online platform work. It presents evidence from interviews with platform economy stakeholders, as well as crowdworkers themselves.
10 March 2025
Meta recently announced its plan to build the world’s longest submarine cable system. The OII’s Professor Vili Lehdonvirta and DPhil candidate Anniki Mikelsaar ask what geopolitical and economic significance this new project may have.
3 November 2024
New research from researchers at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Oxford Internet Institute highlights how marketplace structure influences the impartiality of dispute handling by labour market intermediaries.
29 April 2024
Five faculty members have received Dieter Schwarz Foundation (DSF) funding, enabling them to begin new 12-month research projects at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII).
24 April 2024
In a new blog, Professor Vili Lehdonvirta and researcher Sara Parker consider the economic implications of a possible “TikTok ban” in the US.
Forbes, 17 April 2025
Article highlights how Cloud computing has changed the status of network hardware like servers and data storage from a common asset of organizations or companies to a type of infrastructure, referencing OII research.
BBC News, 17 February 2025
Meta has announced plans to build a 50,000km (31,000 mile) sub-sea cable across the world.
The Economist, 08 October 2024
Amid an explosive data and AI boom the superpower contest hots up.
DPhil Student
Mar Carpanelli is a student on the DPhil in Social Data Science and a Data Scientist & Economist at LinkedIn.
DPhil Student
Abid A. Adonis is a DPhil student at OII, interested in Digital Sovereignty, the Politics of Cyberspace, and the intersection between International Relations and technology.
DPhil Student
Mimmi's DPhil research focuses on the political economy of public sector artificial intelligence projects. She's interested in how technology is reshaping economic structures of societies.
DPhil Student
Philipp researches instruments to distribute the power of digital platform monopolists. He analyses the effects of vertical separation and interoperability in decentralised platform ecosystems.
DPhil Student
Anniki is a DPhil Information, Communication, and Social Sciences student and a Shirley Scholar at the OII. Anniki's research focuses on the governance of digital infrastructures with a particular focus on cable networks.
Former Research Associate
Godo was an OII DPhil Student interested in platform economies, on-demand ride-hailing platforms in Southeast Asia, governance reform, and the developmental impact of technology.
Former DPhil Student
Julian is interested in the future of work, particularly skill development and matching on online labour markets. Alongside his DPhil, he worked as a research assistant for the CrowdLearn research project.
Former DPhil Student
MSc Thesis: Political participation in non-political online communities: The role of sense of community in fostering political participation Supervisor: Dr Vili Lehdonvirta Completed: 2014
Former MSc Student
Odysseas Sclavounis is a DPhil student at the OII and also at the Alan Turing Institute. His research focuses on the governance of public blockchains, specifically Bitcoin and Ethereum.
This course will teach students how to apply basic social science theory towards analysing the impact of digital technologies on economic organization.
