Due to digitalisation in and outside traditional organisations, societal issues are changing fundamentally at an unprecedented pace. No time is to be lost in studying and understanding these developments. By combining expertise from a wide range of disciplines, the Sector plan SSH-Breed: ‘The Influence of Digitalisation on Work, Prosperity and Entrepreneurship’ aims to develop a better understanding of the enormous opportunities associated with digitalisation for individual workers, their organisations and society as a whole. Both from an academic and a societal point of view this is a big challenge. To address it comprehensively, the expertise from all social sciences and humanities is needed.
The Sector plan SSH-Breed is dedicated to the societal effects of digitalisation, looking at it from five different perspectives. The contribution from Erasmus University Rotterdam is focused on the effects of digitalisation on work, prosperity and entrepreneurship. Against that background, five themes have been defined within 'The influence of digitalisation on work, prosperity and entrepreneurship’:
- The Digital Society theme asks critical questions that shape the macro approach of SSH breed, not only examining societal determinants of prosperity, work and entrepreneurship, but also questioning these concepts themselves. Research questions are: What is the appropriate normative framework to assess digitalisation, for instance, what is algorithmic fairness? What challenges does digitalisation pose for the functioning of the labour market? What is the responsibility of the government, for instance regarding the platform economy or the taxation of digital goods and services?
- Digitalisation and platformisation of work processes and products theme looks at the legal and organisational aspects of digitalisation in the area of work processes and products. Questions that can come up are: What is the impact of digitalisation on organisations and individuals? How are work-processes and value-chains affected? What measures should be taken to enhance the results that can be achieved by digitalisation? How can the risks be assessed, and possibly be mitigated?
- Digitalisation, new ways of working and the new employee theme will focus on research questions on the level of the organisation and the network as well as at the level of individual workers and teams, e.g. on how organisational level changes are related to individual level outcomes. Central questions to be answered are: What are the main effects of digitalisation for organisations and which choices do organisations have to implement specific forms of digitalisation? How does digitalisation affect organisational governance and the employment relationship? What are the effects of new modes of working (including virtual and hybrid working) for employees' well-being and organisational performance?
- Digital decision support theme aims to develop and improve the methodology for obtaining data-driven insights in contexts of the digital society. How can digital technology be used to improve decision making (decision support systems)? What methods are necessary to enable this? How can we ensure that the employed methods are sound and robust?
- Data and cyber harms at work theme pays attention to the many ways in which employers, employees and job candidates are downstream from securitisation of digital infrastructures. What vulnerabilities are incorporated in specific algorithmic approaches but also in regular social media communication? How do these and other examples facilitate crime and how should this be addressed? How could legislation help to mitigate cybercrime?
The SSH-Breed sector plan funding and in particular the small grants scheme intends to strengthen all areas of law, criminology and taxation at Erasmus School of Law beyond those appointed on SSH-Breed sector plan funding. Its aim is to facilitate research excellence and to foster national and international visibility of ESL researchers. Further strengthening the research community of Erasmus School of Law and its research excellence is essential to secure structural funding of the sectoral research lines from 2025 onwards. With the small grants scheme, all researchers of Erasmus School of Law are invited to express their interest in contributing to the objectives of the sector plan SSH-Breed and the Erasmus Center of Law and Digitalization.
While applications can be submitted by researchers (PhD candidates, postdocs, assistant professors, associate professors, professors) appointed at any University, the main co-applicant must be in possession of an appointment at Erasmus School of Law throughout the entire period for which the grant is requested.
Applications to the small grants scheme should meet the following criteria:
- Applications should demonstrate a clear link on the impact of digitalization on legal and policy developments;
- Applications should ensure that funds are sought for a clearly defined, discrete activity or piece of research, which will have an identifiable output upon completion and aim at research excellence;
- The final objective and demonstrable achievements for the activity for which the application is submitted must be clearly defined in the proposal;
- It needs to be clearly indicated for what reasons financing is requested from the sector plan small grants scheme;
- Involving more than one legal discipline and researchers from other disciplines (e.g., economics, sociology, philosophy) is a plus, as the sector plan SSH-Breed is meant to valorize on interdisciplinarity. Please note that interdepartmental and interfaculty cooperation is strongly encouraged.
The small grants scheme is not intended for:
- individual conference visits or travel by staff (staff may turn for such funding to their own departments);
- research stays at other universities;
- facilitate initial project planning and development
Applicants may seek support for any combination of eligible activities and costs up to the overall limit of €7,000 (including VAT).
Grants are tenable for between 1 and 12 months. The expectation is that the funding will be spent within an average of 3-6 months of the award being made, although funds can be spent for up to a year. The funds that are not used after 12 months will need to be returned unless exceptionally authorised by the granting committee.
Please note also that grants are not provided as a lump sum. Any application should provide a realistic estimation of concrete activities to be undertaken, accounting for VAT. Grants will be paid based on real costs (e.g. invoices). Departments or individual researchers will have to pre-finance the costs.
The deliverables vary depending on the type of activity financed:
- Funded research requires a working paper to be shared with the Management Team of the sector plan SSH-Breed and the Erasmus Center of Law and Digitalization; the work has the quality to be published in a prestigious journal or as a book chapter with a prestigious publisher.
- Deliverables of organized activities (e.g., conferences, workshops) are the events themselves, given that the event has a prestigious lineup of speakers according to the topic and availability of national and international researchers.
- Deliverables for other funded applications will be adjusted to the nature of the application.
The timing of the deliverables will be decided on a case-by-case basis. These deliverables will be included in the reporting about the sector plan SSH-Breed to the Ministry and listed under the output of the Erasmus Center of Law and Digitalization.
All successful applicants are required to submit a short report ultimately one month after the end of the project containing a statement of original objectives, a brief account of expenditure, project outputs, expected impact, and future plans including the dissemination of findings to relevant networks.
All applications are evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Quality of the proposal: clear objective(s), innovative character, clearly identified expected result(s), logical correspondence between the project proposal and the expected result(s) of the project;
- Fit with the sector plan: alignment with the topics and objectives of the sector plan;
- Budget: the amount requested is proportionate to the intended output.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and assessed equally on their merits, based on the criteria listed above. The decision for funding will be made by the Management Team of the sector plan SSH-Breed and the Erasmus Center of Law and Digitalization. Applicants are assumed to have informed their supervisor that they planned to submit a small grants proposal.
Applications should be submitted to: digitalization@law.eur.nl
If you have any queries or would like to discuss a project idea, please use the digitalization@law.eur.nl email address.
Application form
You can download the application template below. Applications should be submitted to: digitalization@law.eur.nl
