Michael ‘Six’ Silberman
Principal, Whitechapel Rose
I have worked in strategy, digital, and implementation roles with activists, nonprofits, educators, and researchers since 2006. In 2025 I created Whitechapel Rose as a home for this work.
From October 2020 to May 2022 I worked as a software engineer at Organise, a London-based social enterprise supporting worker rights campaigns.
Between 2015 and September 2020 I worked at IG Metall, the trade union in the German manufacturing sector. At IG Metall I did worker organizing, public communication, research coordination, and policy advocacy around the rights of workers on digital labor platforms. This work contributed to the development of the EU Platform Work Directive, adopted in 2024.
In 2008 I cofounded Turkopticon, an independent client reputation system used by workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, with Lilly Irani. I was lead programmer of Turkopticon from 2008 to 2020.
My practical work over the years has been intertwined with research and teaching. In addition to consulting and coaching, I also work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (University of Oxford) and serve as the lecturer in sociotechnical systems at Newspeak House (London College of Political Technology).
I hold a PhD in Information and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Irvine. My advisors were Bill Tomlinson, Bonnie Nardi, and Judith Gregory.