School of Social and Political Science

Background

I study the Reddit community r/Antiwork and how interactions therein inform offline behaviors.

Supervision Team

Dr. Tod van Gunten

Dr. Chris Barrie

Dr. James Stewart

Affiliations

Graduate Fellow – Theory in Sociology Group, CRITIQUE

Affiliate and Ambassador – Centre for Data, Culture & Society

Associate – Global Labour Research Centre (York University)

Teaching

Tutor – Sociology of Freedom – Spring 2025

Tutor – Internet, Society, Economy – Spring 2024

Publications

Stillman, A. and Witte, J. (2024). Measuring the Rise and Fall of a Subreddit using Text Analytics: The Life Course of r/Antiwork. In 2023 10th International Conference on Behavioural and Social Computing (BESC). IEEE. 10.1109/BESC59560.2023.10386347

Stillman, A. (2023). The Emergent r/Antiwork Revolution and Managerial Allies. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2023i0.13497

Stillman, Ari. (2023). The Labor Economy as Fractured Infrastructure. Governance by Infrastructure Position Papers. https://wp.unil.ch/workshopgbi/files/2023/01/Ari_stillmann-1.pdf

Stillman, Ari. (2022). Book Review: Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time. Time & Society 31(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X221111035

Stillman, Ari. (2016). Living Memory: What It Portends When the Founders Still Live. AFA Oracle 12, 62-72. https://doi.org/10.25774/5383-gt55

Stillman, Ari. (2014). Virtual Graveyard: Facebook, Death, and Existentialist Critique. In Christopher Moreman and David Lewis (Eds.), Digital Death  (pp. 43-68). ABC-CLIO/Praeger Press.

Invited Talks

Social Movements and their Discontents (March 26, 2024). Internet, Society, and Economy (University of Edinburgh).

When Digital Ethnography Meets Archival Research: The Issue of Consent (Feb 23, 2024). Digital Ethnography Workshop (University of Edinburgh).

Empowering Online Communities vs. Echo Chambers (March 1, 2023). Internet, Society, and Economy (University of Edinburgh).

Conference Presentations

Social Media & Society ▪ July 2024, London ▪ Presented "r/Antiwork and the Infrapolitics of Workplace Resistance" ▪ Funded by Edinburgh Future Institute

European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) ▪ July 2024, Milan, Italy ▪ Presented "Organizing against hierarchy: r/Antiwork and atomized efficacy"

Labour Transfer Summer School ▪ June 2024, Buggerru, Italy ▪ Presented "The Subreddit r/Antiwork: a movement in itself or just micro-politics?"

Behavioral and Social Computing Annual Conference ▪ November 2023, Larnaca, Cyprus ▪ Presented "Measuring the Rise and Fall of a Subreddit using Text Analytics: The Life Course of r/Antiwork" ▪ Funded by Edinburgh Future Institute

Association of Internet Researchers Annual. Meeting ▪ October 2023, Philadelphia, USA ▪ Presented "The Emergent r/Antiwork Revolution and Managerial Allies" ▪ Funded by Edinburgh University Research Support Fund

BSA Work, Employment, and Society Conference ▪ September 2023, Glasgow, UK ▪ Presented "Managerial Resistance Suggestive of Shifting Class Boundaries" ▪ Funded by the British Sociological Association

International Symposium on Digital Transformation ▪ August 2023, Linnaeus University Växjö, Sweden (online) ▪ Presented "Transforming worker empowerment on Reddit: The case of r/Antiwork"

International Critical Management Studies Conference ▪ June 2023, Nottingham, UK ▪ Presented "Organizing against Capitalism: individual and collective efforts enabled through Reddit"

Social Effort and Inequality ▪ June 2023, Carlos III-Juan March Institute of Social Sciences, Madrid ▪ Presented "Efforts toward Remediating Labor Inequality: The Case of r/Antiwork" ▪ Funded by the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR)

Disrupting Technology: contextualizing continuity and change in technology, work, and employment ▪ June 2023, Monash University Prato Centre, Italy ▪ Presented "Managers on r/Antiwork: how anonymous lurking disrupts employment relations"▪ Funded by Edinburgh Future Institute

Digital Media and Social Change in the 2020s ▪ June 2023 (online) ▪ "Antiwork and Social Change: the dumpster fire of late-stage capitalism"

Historical Materialism Annual Conference ▪ April 2023, Athens, Greece ▪ Presented "Wage War: Antiwork and Proletarian Class Consciousness on Reddit" ▪ Funded by Edinburgh University Research Support Fund

British Sociological Association Annual Meeting ▪ April 2023, Manchester, UK ▪ Presented "Reddit as a Nexus for Rising Antiwork Discourse" ▪ Funded by the British Sociological Association

New Directions Conference ▪ May 2022, University of Edinburgh ▪ Presented paper "Digital Weapons of the Weak"

Governance by Infrastructure Workshop ▪ March 2022, University of Lausanne, Switzerland ▪ Presented paper "The Labor Economy as a Fractured Infrastructure" ▪ Funded by special project grant

American Academy of Religion Annual Conference ▪ Nov 2012 ▪ Presented paper “Mourning through Facebook: The New Digital Culture of Grieving” 

International Social Sciences Conference ▪ Barcelona, Spain June 2012 ▪ Presented paper “Constructing Sacred Cyberspace: New Possibilities for Religion in the Internet Age” ▪ Funded by Vanderbilt University Travel Grant

Prior Education

University of Chicago (Chicago, IL): MA Social Sciences August 2014 Thesis: “Brotherhood for Life?: Determining Effective Commitment Mechanisms that Predict Alumni Involvement in Fraternities”
• Designed survey, distributed to over 1,000 people, and conducted quantitative and qualitative data analysis • Advised by Mario Small

Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN): MA History & Critical Theory of Religion
Thesis: “I Doubt, Therefore I Believe: Locating Doubt within Evangelical Certainty” • Conducted ethnography, composed interview guide, and interviewed 20 individuals • Advised by Shaul Kelner

University of Rochester (Rochester, NY): BA History and Religion

Thesis: “The Religion of Escapism, or the Escapism of Religion?” • Advised by Douglas Brooks
• Graduated with Honors and High Distinction in Religion