Vivian Shalla
Papers
1
Total Citations
493
H-Index
1
About
Vivian Shalla is a leading scholar at the intersection of labour studies, rural sociology, and the political economy of technology. Her work critically examines how digitalization and automation are reshaping agricultural work, rural communities, and social inequality. Shalla is best known for her landmark 2019 study, "Automated pastures and the digital divide," which has garnered nearly 500 citations and fundamentally reframed debates around the so-called "digital revolution" in farming. In this work, she demonstrates how advanced technologies—from sensors and AI to robotics—do not simply increase efficiency but actively reconfigure labour relations, deepen existing divides between large agribusiness and smallholders, and create new forms of exclusion for rural workers. Her research reveals how the promise of precision agriculture often masks a troubling reality of deskilling, surveillance, and marginalization. A professor at the University of Guelph, Shalla’s contributions have been recognized with major grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her incisive, empirically grounded analyses make her essential reading for anyone seeking to understand who truly benefits—and who is left behind—in the technological transformation of our food systems.
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