Our team

Damion Bunders graduated from the master Sociology in 2016 and the master Urban Geography in 2017, both at Utrecht University. After graduation, he worked as a junior lecturer in Human Geography and Spatial Planning for a year. In November 2018, he joined the ICA team as a PhD candidate from the Sustainable Cooperation program (SCOOP). Damion’s research interests focus on the digitalization of society and the social aspects of digital technology. In his project, he aims to obtain insight into what factors enable the viability of online platform cooperatives and sustain their survival in the long run (www.platform.coop). He takes an interdisciplinary perspective and combines both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate if – and under what conditions – platform cooperatives can be viable and scalable alternatives to on the one hand commercial platforms, and on the other hand traditional forms of independent worker organizations. It is Damion’s goal to accurately analyze the social problems of our time and to contribute to a people-oriented vision for the future. In this way he also wants to bring scientific research and social practice closer together.