Faisal is a scholarship recipient of the ARC Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Each year the Centre offers a select number of PhD scholarships across our nodes to engage and prepare the next generation of researchers to make world-leading contributions in an increasingly engaged and transdisciplinary research environment.

Thesis Title
Virtualising Australia’s Public Employment Service through Dashboard: The Experiences of the Australian CALD jobseekers.

Research Description
Under the New Employment Services Model, Australian jobseekers need to explore their employment opportunities through the user interface of the digital PES (Public Employment Service). It is claimed that all working-aged, job-ready and digitally skilled Australians will be significantly benefit from this digital PES via its user interface. This research will problematise such a political claim by assuming that condensed outcomes of sophisticated algorithmic analyses displayed through a user interface could pose challenges for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) jobseekers. In particular, this study asks: In what ways does Workforce Australia’s digital service help and/or hinder CALD job seekers to achieve their employment aspirations? To get a sense of the jobseekers’ experience with the digital user interface, this study intends to apply several commonly used qualitative methods, including interviews, participant observation, and walkthrough method. This study will embody interdisciplinary research at the convergence of algorithm studies and social science to assess the nexus between users and techno-solutions viewed through the lens of social welfare receivers (Australian jobseekers).

Faisal is a career policy analyst who has served the Government of Bangladesh for nearly a decade. His area of interest is the interplay between digital technologies and society. As a Doctoral Candidate, he is currently associated with the University of Queensland, Australia, School of Social Science. He has hands-on experience and expertise in institutional reform with a particular focus on digitalization and policy.

Supervisors
Prof Paul Henman, University of Queensland
Dr Lutfun Nahar Lata, University of Queensland