Rate My Professor Fabian Stephany

Dr Fabian Stephany is a Departmental Research Lecturer at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, where he has held the position since March 2022, following his role as Researcher at the institute from November 2019. He also serves as Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. Stephany leads the SkillScale project at the OII, which examines skills as a lens for understanding labour market transitions in response to technological change, with a focus on the growing importance of AI skills for workers and employers. He is a co-creator of the Online Labour Observatory, a digital data hub developed in collaboration with the International Labour Organization to provide insights into online platform work.

Stephany holds a PhD and additional degrees in economics and social science statistics from European institutions including Università Bocconi in Milan and the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the future of work, internet economics, network science, the online gig economy, and the platform economy. His work has appeared in journals such as Research Policy, Scientific Reports, Big Data & Society, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change, with recent publications addressing topics including the value of skill complementarity, skill-based hiring for AI and green jobs, and working conditions for AI data workers. In addition to his academic roles, Stephany has worked as a senior data scientist in the private sector and advises organisations including the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and the OECD. He is a Future of Work fellow at Bruegel, an inaugural fellow at Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute, a research affiliate at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council for Human Capital Development. His research has received coverage in international media outlets including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Telegraph.