Projects

This Centre of Excellence (CoE) focuses on fostering innovation in resource efficiency, promoting circular economy practices, utilizing local resources, ensuring safe material circulation, and educating researchers to reduce environmental impacts. It centers around four key areas: Strategic Mineral Resources (SMR), Carbon-Based Resources (CBR), Circular Technologies Upscaling (CTU), and Circular Business Eco-System and Modeling (CBEM). The SMR group maps critical materials in waste streams, including renewables, for extraction and reuse while minimizing hazardous waste. The CBR group develops eco-friendly pathways for essential chemicals and plastics, also assessing their environmental impact. The CTU group pioneers waste reduction and recycling methods for aqueous, and solid waste, incl. water purification. The CBEM group analyzes sustainable business ecosystems and value chains. This CoE's interdisciplinary approach will benefit both Estonia and Europe by advancing circular economy.

Driving Climate Positive Futures (DREAM+PLAN), a truly interdisciplinary, international, and intersectoral PhD program, uniting European and Australian research via 32 doctoral positions, many for double degree. DREAM+PLAN brings together a community of visionary changemakers, leaders, who dream big and develop tangible pathways for solving local and global climate-related challenges, all united by a mission to create a positive impact, towards a more sustainable, fair, inclusive and thriving planet for future generations. The overarching objectives of DREAM+PLAN research training program is to create and deliver, legacy-worthy, novel, cutting-edge, 3i-centric training through best-practice multi-faceted, group and individual training options for DC’s

Platform work is a growing form of employment in Estonia, impacting social security options, career paths, and traditional forms of employment. It is essential to understand the economic and social outlook of workers engaged in platform work and the future of this sector in Estonia, in relation to developments in the European Union. This interdisciplinary project, which brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and economists, offers insights into the field of platform work and its broader impacts on the Estonian economy through various quantitative and qualitative methods. The central outcome of the work is a scenario-based analysis of the potential future development of platform entrepreneurship in Estonia, including an examination of emerging risks and opportunities-, considering regulatory developments in Europe, macroeconomic trends, and technological advancements. It also considers the impact of different scenarios on society, including the potential increase in vulnerability. The report produced within the framework of the project, and the related activities carried out within the project are based on the need to understand platform work more broadly while also considering its potential impacts on the development of social security in Estonia.

Platform work is a growing form of employment in Estonia, impacting social security options, career paths, and traditional forms of employment. It is essential to understand the economic and social outlook of workers engaged in platform work and the future of this sector in Estonia, in relation to developments in the European Union. This interdisciplinary project, which brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and economists, offers insights into the field of platform work and its broader impacts on the Estonian economy through various quantitative and qualitative methods. The central outcome of the work is a scenario-based analysis of the potential future development of platform entrepreneurship in Estonia, including an examination of emerging risks and opportunities-, considering regulatory developments in Europe, macroeconomic trends, and technological advancements. It also considers the impact of different scenarios on society, including the potential increase in vulnerability. The report produced within the framework of the project, and the related activities carried out within the project are based on the need to understand platform work more broadly while also considering its potential impacts on the development of social security in Estonia.

Platform work is a growing form of employment in Estonia, impacting social security options, career paths, and traditional forms of employment. It is essential to understand the economic and social outlook of workers engaged in platform work and the future of this sector in Estonia, in relation to developments in the European Union. This interdisciplinary project, which brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and economists, offers insights into the field of platform work and its broader impacts on the Estonian economy through various quantitative and qualitative methods. The central outcome of the work is a scenario-based analysis of the potential future development of platform entrepreneurship in Estonia, including an examination of emerging risks and opportunities-, considering regulatory developments in Europe, macroeconomic trends, and technological advancements. It also considers the impact of different scenarios on society, including the potential increase in vulnerability. The report produced within the framework of the project, and the related activities carried out within the project are based on the need to understand platform work more broadly while also considering its potential impacts on the development of social security in Estonia.

Platform work constitutes the fastest growing segment of alternative work. While many problems (e.g. low wages, unfair treatment of workers) have been reported, the more existential question of worth has received scant attention. Other than providing an (extra) income and a flexible schedule, we know little of what makes platform work worth doing, and why. This is especially true for low-skill and low-status platform work such as ride-hailing or delivery work (often labelled as gig work). So why is gig work (e.g. driving for Bolt) considered work worth doing by those who have a choice? The project explores this from the theoretical perspective of account-making, focusing on how and why the workers themselves and the wider society justify their work as worth doing. A better grasp of a society’s account of why platform work is worth doing is essential in fostering a responsible platform economy, which is critical for the continued flourishing of Estonia's and EU's digital economy.

Demands on human managers seem ever-expanding: they must be able to lead in both virtual and in-person environments, foster psychological safety and avoid micromanagement, be algorithmically literate while in touch with their intuition, and, of course, adhere to high ethical standards. In practice, human managers often turn to smart machines for much-needed aid to meet all the demands placed on them. However, when machines are used to partially automate duties traditionally undertaken by human managers, a new, more- than-human management practice is born. Crucially, the characteristics of more-than-human management will reflect both the nature of human managerial work and the work of smart machines, as well as their synergies – making the outcome more than the sum of the parts. What is "good" and "bad" more-than-human management is, therefore, likely to significantly differ from what is “good” and “bad” human management. Accordingly, project M-BOT examines two pressing questions facing society in the next generation: (1) how smart machines and human managers work together, and (2) what kind of managerial work (e.g., how rich in skills, how wise in decisions) this generates, with the aim of building new general theory of more-than- human management. The project adopts a mixed-methods, three-phase approach of (1) hypotheses development through qualitative case research, (2) hypotheses testing through agent-based modeling, and (3) theory development through substantive and abstract mechanism-based explanations. As PI, I am uniquely prepared to undertake this project as part of my growing portfolio of high-impact, internationally recognized research on digital transformation and future of work, consisting of three cumulative areas: implications of work digitalization for (a) individual workers, (b) organizations, and (c) managers. I have ongoing research projects and publication pipelines in all three areas that help me prepare for project M-BOT.