16th Braga Summer School: Workplace Democracy and the Future of Work
16th BRAGA SUMMER SCHOOL: WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY AND THE FUTURE OF WORK
July 2 – July 3, 2026 | Braga, Portugal
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
IÑIGO GONZÁLEZ RICOY /// University of Barcelona
NICHOLAS VROUSALIS /// Erasmus University Roterdam
LECTURES BY
CATARINA NEVES /// Utrecht University
HUGO RAJÃO /// Independent researcher
Contemporary scholarship increasingly examines transformations in labor and workplace governance within advanced capitalism, with particular emphasis on technological change, automation, and artificial intelligence. Often justified in terms of efficiency—productivity, cost reduction, flexibility, and competitiveness—these developments raise profound normative concerns about justice, domination, and inequality in the workplace.
From industrial capitalism to contemporary platform economies governed by algorithmic management, efficiency has evolved into a normative principle shaping labor relations, institutional frameworks, and political priorities. Today, it manifests in precarious employment, weakened labor protections, intensified managerial oversight, and technological displacement, posing significant challenges for democratic societies.
Building on the success of previous editions, this Summer School focuses on workplace democracy and the future of work, treating workplaces as primary sites of justice and injustice in contemporary societies. Efficiency-driven market structures may generate normatively objectionable forms of exploitation, domination, and exclusion, raising fundamental questions about freedom, equality, and democratic legitimacy.
Key questions include: To what extent is labor exploitation an unavoidable feature of efficiency-oriented markets? How does exploitation relate to republican freedom as non-domination and liberal ideals of fair cooperation? How do organizational hierarchies, governance structures, and algorithmic management shape workplace injustice and broader social inequalities? What institutional responses—from exit options such as Unconditional Basic Income to labor constitutionalism, co-determination, or alternative ownership models—are normatively justified?
We invite submissions on topics including (but not limited to):
- Efficiency as a normative ideal and its limits
- Automation, AI, and the future of work
- Workplace democracy and firm governance
- Exploitation, domination, and commodification at work
- Market efficiency and distributive injustice
- Exit options (e.g., Unconditional Basic Income)
- Labor law, regulation, and labor constitutionalism
- Platform work, self-employment, and precarity
- Collective rights, unions, and the right to strike
- Property–labor relations and corporate power
- Alternative models of the firm (cooperatives, co-determination, wage-earner funds, hybrid or non-capitalist enterprises)
- Socialist, republican, and hybrid institutional responses to contemporary capitalism
Submit your abstract here.
CONTACT
For any questions concerning the submissions and details not specified do not hesitate to contact us at 16thbragasummerschool@gmail.com.
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