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Greig de Peuter researches the political economy of digital media and cultural production, with a focus on work, employment, and collective organizing. He is coauthor, with Nicole Cohen, of New Media Unions: Organizing Digital Journalists and, with Nick Dyer-Witheford, of Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games.
His current research documents collective responses to exploitation, precarity, and inequalities within media, art, and other cultural sectors. The primary framework for this research is Cultural Workers Organize, a SSHRC-funded collaboration with Enda Brophy, Nicole Cohen, Kate Oakley, and Marisol Sandoval. Cultural Workers Organize has published on alternative worker organizations, union drives, policy reform proposals, worker co-operatives, and coworking spaces, among other infrastructures of mutual aid.
Alongside his research, Greig has frequently worked collaboratively on alternative education, public scholarship, and curatorial projects. He was a cofounder of Critical U, the Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry, and Letters & Handshakes. In these and other collective contexts, he has co-organized several public forums, symposiums, and exhibitions.
Prior to his current position, he was a visiting scholar at New York University in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. He received a PhD in Communication from Simon Fraser University.
Books
Cohen, N. and G. de Peuter (2020) New Media Unions: Organizing Digital Journalists. New York: Routledge.
Dyer-Witheford, N. and G. de Peuter (2009) Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Coté, R. Day, and G. de Peuter, eds. (2007) Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kline, S., N. Dyer-Witheford, and G. de Peuter (2003) Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Journal articles
de Peuter, G. and C. Young (2019) “Contested Formations of Digital Game Labor.” Television & New Media 20(8): 747-755.
Cohen, N. and G. de Peuter (2018) “Interns Talk Back: Disrupting Narratives of Unpaid Work.” Political Economy of Communication 6(2): 3-24.
de Peuter, G., N. Cohen, and F. Saraco (2017) “The Ambivalence of Coworking: On the Politics of an Emergent Work Practice.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 20(6): 687-706.
de Peuter, G. (2014) “Beyond the Model Worker: Surveying a Creative Precariat.” Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 6: 263-284.
de Peuter, G. (2011) “Creative Economy and Labor Precarity: A Contested Convergence.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 35(4): 417-425.
de Peuter, G. and N. Dyer-Witheford (2010) “Commons and Co-operatives.” Affinities 3: 30-56.
Book chapters
de Peuter, G. (forthcoming) “Organizing Dark Matter: W.A.G.E. as Alternative Worker Organization.” In J. Compton, N. Dyer-Witheford, A. Grzyb, and A. Hearn, eds. Organizing Equality: Global Struggles in an Age of Right-Wing Ascendancy. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Cohen, N. and G. de Peuter (2018) “‘I Work at VICE Canada and I Need a Union’: Organizing Digital Media.” In S. Ross and L. Savage, eds. Labour Under Attack: Anti-unionism in Canada, 114-128. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood.
de Peuter, G. (2015) “Online Games and Counterplay.” In P.H. Ang and R. Mansell, eds. The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
de Peuter, G. and N. Cohen (2015) “Emerging Labour Politics in Creative Industries.” In K. Oakley and J. O’Connor, eds. The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries, 305-318. London: Routledge.
Brophy, E. and G. de Peuter (2014) “Labours of Mobility: Communicative Capitalism and the Smartphone Cybertariat.” In A. Herman, J. Hadlaw, and T. Swiss, eds. Theories of the Mobile Internet: Materialities and Imaginaries, 60-84. New York: Routledge.
de Peuter, G. (2012) “Level Up: Video Games Production in Canada.” In I. Wagman and P. Urquhart, eds. Cultural Industries.ca: Making Sense of Media in a Digital Age, 77-93. Toronto: Lorimer.
Editorial projects
Young, C. and G. de Peuter, eds. (2019) “Contested Formations of Digital Game Labor.” Television & New Media 20(8): 747-861.
Letters & Handshakes, ed. (2017) “Take Care,” The Blackwood 01 (July). Mississauga: Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga.
Letters & Handshakes, ed. (2016) Surplus3: Labour and the Digital. Letters & Handshakes.
de Peuter, G., N. Cohen, and E. Brophy, eds. (2015) “Interrogating Internships: Unpaid Work, Creative Industries, and Higher Education.” tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique13(2): 329-605.
Letters & Handshakes, ed. (2014) Precarious: Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge. Waterloo: Robert Langen Art Gallery.
Magazine articles and other publications
Cohen, N. and G. de Peuter (2019) “Write, Post, Unionize: Digital Journalists and Self-Organization.” Notes from Below.
de Peuter, G. (2017) “Coworking and Co-operatives: A Union in the Making.” STIR 19, 12-15.
Cohen, N. and G. de Peuter (2015) “Creative Accounting: W.A.G.E.’s Fight for Artist Fees.” Frieze 170 (April), 25-26.
de Peuter, G., N. Cohen, and E. Brophy (2012) “Interns, Unite (You Have Nothing to Lose—Literally),” Briarpatch, Nov./Dec., 6-9.
Insight Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, “Pathways Beyond Precarity in the Cultural and Creative Industries: Sustainable Livelihoods and Cultures of Solidarity.” 2016-21.
Exhibition of the Year Award (Thematic), Ontario Association of Art Galleries. I stood before the source, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga, Oct. 16-Dec. 3. 2016. Curated by Letters & Handshakes (a collaboration of G. de Peuter and C. Shaw). 2017.
Award for Excellence in Labour Reporting, Canadian Association of Journalists/CWA Canada. For G. de Peuter, N. Cohen, and E. Brophy, “Interns, Unite (You Have Nothing to Lose—Literally),” Briarpatch, Nov./Dec., 2012. 2013.
Standard Research Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, “Flexible Workforces Respond to the Creative Economy: The Recomposition of Labour Politics in an Age of Precarity.” 2011-14.
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, “Union Organizing in the Global Cultural Economy.” 2010-12. (Declined)
I welcome inquiries from prospective graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.