Our research

This project creates new technologies for promoting the social economy within communities. It includes a first of its kind online community project platform that is being launched in Northern Ireland and Ireland in 2022 coupled with an empowering programme for young people in Belfast.

We hope that in the near future this will be used to promote democracy and cooperation by governments, Universities, organisations, and communities world wide.

COVER co-lead Professor Phoebe V Moore, aka the Quantified Worker, is a prolific researcher whose vision about quantified work is seen within her third monograph The Quantified Self in Precarity on new materiality and labour relations surrounding wearable technologies at work.

Professor Moore’s arguments about algorithmic management and AI augmented work surveillance technologies have entered high level policy circles, sponsored by European Parliament, the EU Safety & Health Agency, the UN International Labour Organization ACTRAV, and most recently the ILO Research Department with her project Policy Observatory for Work in the Digital Economy.

Discover more about Professor Moore's work on the future of work

Dr George Kokkinidis is oart of a funded team creating a standard social economy curriculum to be used in Universities and communities. 

Joining Social Economy Forces towards Community development, Connected societies, Co-creation of knowledge and Collaborative education practices is a Knowledge Alliance co-financed under Erasmus+ seeking to create an enabling environment for the Social Economy to thrive by promoting closer partnerships between Higher Education Institutions active in Social Economy, Social Economy organisations and enterprises, as well as community stakeholders.

Our key objectives are to:

• Provide an overview of the current Social Economy education landscape
• Pilot Social Economy Living Labs in 3 EU countries and the UK
• Bridge the gap in supply and demand of SE education and skills

Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life.

Operating as an open access media project since 2009, Minor Compositions seeks to bring practices of common-ing into theorizing and media production.

Thus far over 45 books have been published including David Graeber, Stefano Harney, Fred Moten, Felix Guattari, Erin Manning, and many others.

Nicholas is currently taking a leading role in the design and development the new MSc in Social Economy, drawing on his previous research on the commons and social economy, and his past experience in the broader not for profit sector.

Nicholas is also currently building and delivering a ‘Masters in Commons Administration’ as a part of the broader work on the commons of the new independent Institutes for Commons, of which is a core member.

He is also a board member of the European movement education project Common Ecologies.

Intersectional Network Of community and stakeholder Voices, And research to Tackle (in)Equities (INNOVATE) in mental health and well-being is a project funded by AHRC - UKRI.

INNOVATE is a consortium that catalyses multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder dialogue, research, and practice that deepens intersectional analysis and its application to drive a new transformative research and praxis agenda for health and social care while prioritising engagement of underserved population groups.

The consortium will produce new ways to consider health inequality challenges, drawing on leading-edge intersectional analysis, and offer grounded insights, practical tools and innovative approaches to build capabilities, and foster resilient systems and healthy communities.

Organise Now! is a peer to peer network established by BFAWU (the Bakers, Food, and Allied Workers Union), Strike Map, and Notes from Below. It connects people who want to try and change their working conditions with more experienced people for the trade union movement and other campaigning organisations.

The project is hosted through an online platform and has had hundreds of volunteers sign up since the launch in August 2022. However, there is little funding to support the early phase of the project. A grant could accelerate the process by providing support for outreach and website costs.

This project has the potential to shed new light into two important areas: first, what are the issues that low-paid and precarious workers face - and how can they address these? Second, what new forms of organisation can support collective self-organisation?

Through engaging with partners in the Organise Now! project, these questions can be collectively explored, as well as generating meaningful impact.

This report presents research conducted collaboratively by researchers from the University of Essex and Promising Trouble, funded by the Business and Local Government Data Research Centre.

Carried out between May and September 2024, the study examines how community businesses engage with technology and artificial intelligence (AI) and explores their views on 'community technology' and 'community AI' approaches.

The research involved 28 community businesses across the UK and 13 in-depth interviews with a diverse range of organisations. The findings reveal a broad spectrum of technological engagement, with a strong interest in community tech and AI for social good. However, organisations face significant challenges, including issues with data management, ethical adoption, limited resources, and a need for more education, collaboration, and community-led governance. The report calls for investment in skills, ethical governance, funding, and collaboration to ensure that community tech and AI are inclusive, sustainable, and driven by the needs of communities. Achieving the potential of community technology and AI to support more equitable and sustainable futures will require ongoing collaboration and investment, alongside a shift away from market-driven models towards those that are community-led, ethically grounded, and environmentally responsible.

We deeply appreciate everyone who contributed to this research, especially the participants whose knowledge and insights made it possible.

• Bloom, P., Jones, O. S., & Woodcock, J. (2021) Guerrilla Democracy: Mobile Power and Revolution in the 21st Century, Policy Press
• Bloom, P. (2020) Identity, Institutions and Governance in an AI World: Transhuman Relations, Springer Nature
• Moore, P. V. (2019) The quantified self in precarity: Work, technology and what counts, Routledge
• Shukaitis, S. (2009) Imaginal machines: Autonomy & self-organization in the revolutions of everyday life, Autonomedia
• Shukaitis, S (2016) The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics & Cultural Labor After the Avant-Garde, Rowman & Littlefield International
• Barbagallo, C., Beuret, N. & Harvie, D. (2019) Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federic, University of Chicago Press Economics Books
• Nunes, R. (2021) Neither vertical nor horizontal: A theory of political organization, Verso Books
• Woodcock, J. (2021) The Fight Against Platform Capitalism: An Inquiry into the Global Struggles of the Gig Economy, London: University of Westminster Press
• Preston, J. & Firth, R. (2020) Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom, Palgrave Macmillan
• McGoey, L. (2015) No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy, Verso

• Moore, P. V. (2022) Problems in protections for working data subjects: The social relations of data production, Global Political Economy 1(2)
• Moore, P. V. (2020) Data subjects, digital surveillance, AI and the future of work, Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) European Parliament
• Kokkinidis, G. & Checchi, M. (2021) Power matters: Posthuman entanglements in a social solidarity clinic, Organization, 1350508420973304
• Daskalaki, M. and Kokkinidis, G. (2017) Organizing Solidarity initiatives: A socio-spatial conceptualization of resistance, Organization Studies, 38(9): 1303-1325
• Kokkinidis, G. (2015) Spaces of possibilities: Workers' self-management in Greece, Organization, 22(6): 847-87
• Kokkinidis, G. (2015) Post-capitalist imaginaries: The case of workers’ collectives in Greece, Journal of Management Inquiry, 24(4), 429-432
• Kanngieser, A. & Beuret, N. (2017) Refusing the World: Silence, Commoning, and the Anthropocene, South Atlantic Quarterly, 116 (2), 363-380
• Howarth, D. & Roussos, K. (2022) Radical Democracy, the Commons and Everyday Struggles during the Greek Crisis, The British Journal of Politics and International Relation

• Politics and Society After Work, Anthem Press – Edited by Professor Peter Bloom

 The Anthem Series on Politics and Society After Work publishes scholarly interdisciplinary work on the creation of empowering post-work societies locally and globally, seeking to better critically understand how technology can liberate individuals and lead to more emancipatory social, organisational, and inter-personal relationships while also transforming the everyday practices and deeper ideologies our current neoliberal status quo. The series focuses on the different political, cultural and institutional arrangements and perspectives associated with the move toward a potential “post-work” economy.

• Minor Compositions - Edited by Professor Stevphen Shukaitis

 This a series of interventions & provocations drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life.

• Journal: Global Political Economy - Co-Editor in Chief, Professor Phoebe Moore

Global Political Economy (GPE) is the much-anticipated journal for the discipline of global political economy, with an explicit intention of cross-disciplinarity, spanning international relations, sociology, feminism and gender studies, political science, business studies, science and technology studies, communications, economics, geography, and more, encouraging debates and discussions across these arenas.