Research

Photo by Mahdis Mousavi / Unsplash.com

This Research Platform brings together researchers from the social sciences, law, and operations research to study and improve the governance of digital practices.

Digital practices refer to all social, political, scientific and economic practices that create, use, or modify digital technologies. Our focus on the governance of digital practices enables us to analyse both how digital practices themselves are shaped and regulated, and how people, places and populations are governed through digital practices.

The platform’s doctoral projects follow this approach. They do so by exploring the governance of digital mental health carethe FAIR data principles, and data-intensive scientific practices in marine biology. Our affiliate doctoral researchers focus on ethics in computational social sciences, on the digitisation of education and the right to personal development of children, and on the governance of digital health platforms.

Members of the platform work on analytic and normative questions related to knowledge work, digital platforms and digital health. They study the factors that give shape to digital practices and also work towards developing new solutions for governing digital practices.

This is particularly important in cases where digital practices lead to inequities, exclusion or discrimination. At the same time, good governance of digital practices has the potential to enhance equity and strengthen democracy.


The Research Platform addresses a number of key challenges in digital governance through interdisciplinary projects conducted and supervised by members or affiliates of the platform. The projects are:  


Our doctoral projects

Doctoral Project 1

Knowledge-intensive human work in the age of digital transformation

Doctoral Project 2

Governing common resources via digital platforms

Doctoral Project 3

Digital health care governance and privacy


Affiliated doctoral projects

Affiliated Project 1

The Ethics and Governance of Computational Social Science

Affiliated Project 2

Governing digital health platforms as spaces of healthcare provision

Affiliated Project 3

Personalisation for Personal Development? Governance of Digital Education in Germany and Austria


Third-party funded projects

Third-party funded project 1

Work & Corona (WoCo)

Principal investigator: Lukas Schlögl (until 07/2022); Fabian Kalleitner (since 07/2022)

Funded by: Digifonds AK Wien

Lifetime: 06/2021 - 05/2023

Third-party funded project 2 (affiliated)

Dealing with uncertainty on anonymous online drug markets

Principal investigatorMeropi Tzanetakis

Funded byAustrian Science Fund (FWF)

Lifetime: 11/2017 - 06/2021