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The University of Hertfordshire is the UK's leading business-facing university and an exemplar in the sector. It is one of the region's largest employers with over 2,650 staff and a turnover of almost £233 million. It ranks in the top 4% of all universities in the world according to the Times Higher Education World Rankings and is also one of the top 100 universities in the world under 50 years old. In the last UK Research Assessment Exercise it was given the highest rank for research quality among the post-1992 universities. 2 Towards a Taxonomy of Virtual Work AbstractOnline spaces have led to novel forms of activity. These include real-money trading in massively multiplayer online role-playing games, on-line content production, working through crowdsourcing Internet marketplaces, online gambling, playing human-based computation games, or just browsing on the Internet, sharing files, and connecting with friends. A growing number of scholars refer to them as new labour activities, virtual work, digital labour or describe them as new sources of value creation for capital. Along with all these developments, new terms describing the virtual workforce are also emergingGold Farmer, Prosumer, Turker or Microworker are only a few examples. Despite these new terms and categories, there is a lack of conceptual framework and understanding of what constitutes virtual work in more general terms. There is no clear classification of this type of work and no clear separation from the work that takes place in the ´real world´. This paper explores the obstacles that are blocking the way for building a classification and moving towards a definition and taxonomy.

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