Callum is an Associate Professor of Translation Technology at the University of Leeds and began his affiliation at the Halsden Centre in 2024. Before joining the University of Leeds in 2020, Callum held lecturing positions at Durham University, University College London, and Goldsmiths College University of London, as well as working for roughly a decade as a full-time translator from French and Russian into English.

Callum’s research interests centre primarily around the economics of contemporary labour workflows, with respect to the translation industry, and especially freelance labour, as the primary focus of his attention. His conceptual and empirical work spans subfields ranging from micro-economics, through information economics, to labour economics, often addressing the interplay between working conditions, job quality, technologised workflows (including AI-induced obsolescence), and power dynamics between different economic agents, especially in contexts of perceived exploitation and top-down enforcement of labour conditions. His emerging research pays close attention to conditions imposed on workers in precarious employment and, in light of the nature of language services more generally, typically affect ethnic minorities more than other groups.

He has considerable expertise in a range of different research methods, including qualitative methods conventionally associated with sociological research (e.g. surveys, focus groups) and wholly quantitative methods (including experimental methods) and associated statistical analyses.