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Manuel Souto-Otero

School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University
Deputy Programme Director, Digital Futures of Work

My main areas of interest are education policy analysis and evaluation. I have a particular interest in the link between education and work, particularly digitalisation, the future of work and its implications for skills development, social stratification and inequalities, and internationalisation in education. I have undertaken extensive research in those areas and have also undertaken a large number of consultancy projects on education issues for the European Commission, European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), various governments, think-tanks and voluntary sector organisations.

 

Related Articles
Blog | November 18, 2022

What does the digital labour market mean for the competition for jobs?

Digital innovation is rapidly transforming how labour markets shape the competition for jobs. We now spend more time online and create more digital data than ever before. Over 90 per cent of the population in many developed countries has access to the internet (World Bank 2021), and spend a lot

Publications | August 16, 2022

Working Paper 6: The rise of the digital labour market: characteristics and implications for the study of education, opportunity and work

The study of education and work has typically focused on the role of the credential in shaping individual opportunities in the competition of jobs. Despite its pivotal role in understanding the link between education and work how the labour market operates in an increasingly digital context has remained under-researched. This

Blog | April 1, 2022

New methods to understand the labour market in the digital economy

As part of the Digital Futures of Work Programme, we brought together over 30 experts from Europe and Asia to discuss new methods to improve our understanding of skills anticipation, job redesign, and labour markets in a context of rapid digital innovation. There is increasing interest in the potential and

Blog | March 11, 2022

The emergence of the digital labour market and its perils

Rapid digital innovation is transforming how people look for jobs and how companies recruit. As a result, the competition for jobs is being transformed. Digital tools give job seekers new ways of describing themselves and employers new sources of data on candidates, in real-time and at low cost. But are

Publications | February 8, 2021

Working Paper 4: Technological change and labour substitution: can firm characteristics shield workers against automation?

A burgeoning literature that has emerged examining the potential of technology to automate labour. Much of this work, however, has relied on expert opinions and is ‘de-contextualised’, with little use of data on firms’ actual behaviour. We employ a rich dataset of over 3,800 companies to explore whether certain firm

Blog | February 4, 2021

Looking for a shelter against automation? Your boss might be part of the answer

There is a lot of discussion about robots taking our jobs. Much of it is speculative, usually forecasts based on the opinions of AI experts, who tend to be too enthusiastic about the potential of digital technologies. Such estimates take little account of job redesign possibilities, or social and economic

Publications | February 1, 2021

Working Paper 1: Digital futures of work: reimagining jobs, skills and education for the digital age

Digital innovation is widely recognised as a game changer. Despite attention-grabbing headlines of robots outsmarting humans leading to widespread technological unemployment and counter claims that technology will create more good jobs than it destroys just like in previous epochs, there has been little systematic analysis or evaluation of exactly how