Working Group 1 Meeting in Edinburg
The WG1 meeting in Edinburgh on 23 October 2019 opened with an invited talk by Chris Hellawell, director and founder of the Edinburgh Tool Library. The meeting attendees enjoyed hearing about the story of how the tool library came into being and the different activities it is now fostering in the local community.
After an update on the working group's activities and the task forces active within the Action, the main focus of the meeting this time was to advance efforts toward creating a theoretical framework of the collaborative economy. We first heard a video presentation by WG1 member Mijalche Santa from Ss Cyril and Methodis University, North Macedonia, on meta-theorizing. This line of work builds on Santa's STSM with Juho Pesonen at the University of Eastern Finland. After the presentation, the working group split into three breakout groups to work on outputs for the theoretical framework deliverable, building in part on our collection of ethnographic research case studies and the methodological toolkit.
In the afternoon, Dr. Karen Gregory from the University of Edinburgh joined the meeting to give an invited talk on her research regarding the gig economy. Gregory's work brings current social studies of platform labor together with longstanding sociology of risk. The second part of the afternoon was organised as a writing workshop, with the aim of facilitating co-authored publications and other collaborations among working group members.
After the meeting, we had the opportunity to visit the workshop of Edinburgh Tool Library and continue the conversation we started with Chris Hellawell in the morning.
