I became a gig worker by accident, the way most people do. It was the summer after my second year, and I needed money. A friend sent me a referral link for a food delivery app, and within forty-eight hours I was on a borrowed bicycle, navigating London’s backstreets with a thermal bag slung over my shoulder. I told myself it was temporary — a few months, maybe, until I’d saved enough for rent and a laptop that didn’t crash every time I opened more than three tabs. But the longer I worked, the harder it became to ignore the contradictions. The app called me an “independent contractor,” yet it dictated my routes, penalised me for rejecting orders, and could deactivate my account at any moment without explanation. The customers called me “mate” and tipped me in coins, but they had no idea that the algorithm was tracking my every move, comparing my speed to other riders, and quietly deciding whether I was worth keeping. I wasn’t just delivering food; I was delivering data to a system that saw me as a disposable input. And I couldn’t stop wondering: how did we get here? How did a generation of workers end up in a system that felt less like employment and more like a lottery, where the prize was simply being allowed to work another day?
Those six months on the bike changed the direction of my degree. I switched modules, read everything I could about platform capitalism, and started asking questions that felt far more urgent than any textbook case study. When the time came to choose a dissertation topic, I knew I wanted to explore the gig economy — not as a distant economic phenomenon, but as a lived experience that was reshaping millions of lives, including my own. But I needed a specific, researchable angle. I began by exploring what other students had already investigated, and I came across a collection of gig economy and platform economy dissertation topics (you can browse them here: https://premierdissertations.com/gig-economy-dissertation-topics/) that helped me see the full picture. Some projects examined the legal classification of gig workers under UK employment law, others analysed the psychological effects of algorithmic management on driver wellbeing, and a few explored how platforms use gamification to extract more labour without raising pay. That breadth gave me the confidence to focus on a question I had lived: how does the algorithmic control of delivery platforms affect the autonomy and wellbeing of workers, and what regulatory responses are emerging in the UK and Europe?
Once I had my question, the research began in earnest — not on a bike this time, but with a voice recorder and a stack of legal documents. I interviewed former colleagues who were still riding, lawyers who were fighting test cases on worker status, and policymakers who were grappling with the implications of a labour market that had outpaced the law. The stories were raw and often contradictory. Some riders valued the flexibility the platform offered; others described the constant anxiety of chasing ratings and the humiliation of being treated as interchangeable. One man told me he had worked sixty-hour weeks for two years and still couldn’t afford to take a single day off when his daughter was born. His voice cracked as he described the app’s automated message congratulating him on his “milestone” delivery — the same day he’d missed his child’s first breath because the algorithm doesn’t recognise paternity leave. That interview became the moral centre of my dissertation. I argued that platform work is not inherently exploitative, but the current legal and regulatory framework allows companies to externalise the costs of doing business onto the workers who can least afford to bear them. Real change, I suggested, requires not just reclassifying workers but rethinking the fundamental relationship between platforms, labour, and the state.
Writing that dissertation didn’t make me an expert on the gig economy. It made me more aware of how much I still don’t know. But it gave me a framework for asking better questions, and a deep respect for the people who do this work every day — not as a research topic, but as a livelihood. If you’re considering a dissertation on the gig or platform economy, I’d encourage you to start not with the theory but with the people. Talk to a driver, a rider, a cleaner, someone who earns their living through an app. Listen to their frustrations and their small victories. The best research questions don’t emerge from academic journals; they emerge from the messy, exhausting, deeply human reality of trying to make a living in a system that wasn’t designed with your wellbeing in mind. Then explore what other students have already done, and let their work help you shape your own inquiry into something that might just make a difference.