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Professor Kylie Jarrett from the UCD School of Information & Communication Studies has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for her project LivePlatforms—one of only two ERC Advanced Grants awarded in Ireland this year, both to researchers at University College Dublin.
Valued at €2.5 million, the ERC Advanced Grant is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme and among the most competitive research funding awards in Europe. UCD’s success in securing both of Ireland’s successful applications in this round underscores the university’s research leadership.
Professor Jarrett’s project, LivePlatforms (Livelihoods in the Platform Economy Ecosystem), will deliver the first large-scale study of how digital platforms are reshaping the nature of work in Ireland. From Deliveroo riders and freelance coders to influencers, content creators, and resellers, platform-based work is a growing part of the economy but remains under-researched.
A 2022 national survey found that more than 31% of Irish workers had engaged in some form of digitally mediated work. LivePlatforms will investigate this labour ecosystem in depth—who participates in it, what structures support or constrain them, and how decent, secure, and fair work can be ensured.
“The grant will provide a fantastic opportunity to work with a team of early career researchers to build our critical understanding of this increasingly important labour sector and to facilitate wide collaborations with colleagues across the School of Information and Communication Studies and the College of Social Sciences and Law,” said Professor Jarrett.
She added: “LivePlatforms is about understanding how people generate livelihoods in the platform economy in Ireland, seeking to identify the various actors that make that possible—and also those that might make it more difficult. The support of the ERC will allow us to build this picture at a large scale, generating important insight into the Irish context while also developing a model for researching platform work at a national scale that can be applied elsewhere.”
For more information on the ERC Advanced Grants and a full list of awarded projects, visit the (opens in a new window)ERC website.