Yunus Emre Oztas

Profile

I am a postgraduate researcher at Leeds University Business School (LUBS), starting on October 1, 2024, funded by the People, Work and Employment department. Since March 2025, I have also been a member of the ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Work Doctoral Network.

I am currently working as a research assistant on the ERC-funded MUSICSTREAM project until November 2026, assisting research on AI and music industries.

In my ongoing PhD research, I critically examine digital visual media professionals’ engagements with generative AI technologies in their everyday work. Rather than reproducing generalised discourses around automation or creativity, I focus on the situated, everyday practices of creative workers, asking what it actually means to use these tools, under what conditions, and with what consequences. I situate these engagements within the broader dynamics of economic, political, and sociotechnical change in cultural production, attending to how shifting working conditions and experiences across the cultural industries shape, and are shaped by, the integration of generative AI into creative labour.

Research interests

Creative Industries, Cultural Industires, Creative Labour, Sociology of Work, Cultural Policy, Social and Critical Theory, Philosophies of Technology

Qualifications

• MA Media and Communication Studies
• BA Communication Design and Management

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change