Digital Dependency Theory: Sovereignty and development in 21st century capitalism
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS
- Room
- B103
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
This event is part of the SOAS Economics Seminar Series 2025/26.
Contemporary capitalism is increasingly shaped by a small group of mostly U.S.-based technology corporations that concentrate the benefits of globally produced knowledge and innovation, redefining traditional understandings of power, sovereignty, and progress.
As regions such as Latin America, Africa, and even Europe become digital peripheries, dependency no longer follows simple models of colonialism or feudalism but emerges through complex networks of hierarchy, complicity, and extraction linking nature, data, labor, and ideology.
These dynamics transform work, creativity, and critical thought, raising urgent questions about who sustains this system and why efforts to build meaningful digital sovereignty and viable alternatives continue to fail.
Header image credit: NASA via Unsplash.
About the speaker
Dr. Cecilia Rikap is an Associate Professor in Economics and the Head of Research at the University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Cecilia’s work lays at the intersection of international political economy and the economics of innovation. She studies corporate power and its interplay with political power.
In particular, she analyses the concentration of intangible assets leading to the emergence of intellectual monopolies, notably from digital and pharma industries. Her most recent work focuses on artificial intelligence, the cloud, Big Tech dominance, AI-driven geopolitical tensions and digital sovereignty.
After publishing two books on these topics, she has two other books coming out in 2026. “The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud” is published by Verso Books. “Teoría de la Dependencia Digital. Soberanía y Desarrollo en el Capitalismo del Siglo XXI” will be out with Caja Negra in March.
