Prof. Dr. Gemma Newlands is Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Societal Digitalization and DSI Professor at the Digital Society Initiative (DSI) at the University of Zurich. She is an organisational sociologist whose research focuses on the transformation of work in the age of artificial intelligence.

She previously worked as a Departmental Research Lecturer at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford (2022 to 2025) and received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2023. Prior to this, she was a Doctoral Stipendiary Researcher and Research Assistant at the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society at BI Norwegian Business School (2016 to 2022). She also holds a Master of Philosophy and a Master of Arts from the University of Oxford. 

At the Department of Sociology, University of Zurich, Prof. Dr. Gemma Newlands leads a research team dedicated to examining human-AI hybridity in the workplace. Her team’s work investigates how digital technologies reshape socio-organisational processes, decision-making, and lived work experiences with particular attention to themes such as augmentation, transparency, and temporal trade-offs.

Her research has been widely published in leading academic journals on topics related to AI, occupational evaluation, digital labour, and algorithmic management.