As 2022 comes to a close, we’ve put together a blog to share some of the biggest highlights of the year for the HECAT team. We’d like to wish everyone reading this a very happy festive season and are looking forward to an exciting and hopeful 2023!
Conferences
Our consortium attended a range of international conferences this year. This saw us sharing our work with multi-disciplinary experts and stakeholders from across the world. In total, almost 20 pieces of HECAT-related work were accepted at conferences globally in 2022. Conferences we attended included:
- Sociology Association of Ireland (SAI), Limerick, May 2022
- Street-Level Bureaucracy, Copenhagen, June 2022
- European Group for Organisational Studies Conference (EGOS), Vienna, July 2022
- 17th European Congress on Psychology, Ljubljana, July 2022
- European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), Madrid, July 2022
- European Network for Social Policy Analysis (ESPANET), Vienna, September 2022
We’re excited to continue sharing HECAT’s work in 2022 and are working on our applications for a variety of international conferences for 2023.
Events and Talks
Always eager to share our work with interested parties, our consortium also got involved in events and talks both at our home institutes and further afield.
Economy and Society Summer School, Cork, Ireland
SETU Waterford was integral in planning and running the annual Economy and Society Summer School 2022. Back in hybrid form after a Covid-led Zoom interlude, the ESSS 2022 ran across three themed days and was a key event of the year for many. ESSS 2022 encouraged a return to the ancient origins of academics, promoting walking, talking and on-the-go thinking across its 3 days. You can read more on ESSS 2022 here and apply for the upcoming ESSS 2023 by clicking here!
CEDIC Talks at the Oslo Metropolitan University
Janine Leschke, of HECAT’s Copenhagen Business School cohort, was invited to present her work at Oslo Met’s CEDIC Talks in October of this year. CEDIC talks brings together natation and international researchers and experts from across institutions and fields to hold open guest lectures in the intersection between digitalisation, society and culture, Janine spoke eloquently about her work within HECAT under the title: Sustainable labour market integration: potentials and challenges in using job quality information in job matching and algorithmic profiling of jobseekers
Danish Parliamentary Board on Employment
Team members Magnus Paulsen Hansen and Sabina Pultz from Roskilde University further took to the Danish Parliamentary Employment Committee in May 2022. Here, they shared their research on the suspension of requirements and duties during Covid lockdown. Their further discussed their learnings on dignity at the interface of the person and the job centre.
Continued Industry Engagement
Across 2022, our consortium members across Europe continued to engage with fellow researchers, PES organisations and stakeholders, decision-makers, and other interested parties through their active research practises. As our project continues, we see continued value in engaging with those who are affected head-on by disruptive technologies within the labour market and aspire to continue to engage with such stakeholders into 2023.
Key Publications
Not only have our consortium members been busy publishing work in their own expert areas, we’ve seen a number of HECAT-adjacent papers published in 2022.
Both Sciences Po and SETU team members have had HECAT-related studies published in sociological journals:
- Activation Through Marketisation As A Process of Ignorancing by Zach Roche and Ray Griffin in Social Policy and Administration https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12871
- Un Chômage Sans Recherche D’emploi? Une Zone D’ombre Dans La Littérature Sociologique Sur Les Expériences Du Chômage (Unemployment without jobsearch? A gray area in the sociology literature on experiences of unemployment) by Didier Demazière and Alizée Delpierre https://doi.org/10.4000/sdt.41644
HECAT was further well represented in the Sociology Association of Ireland, The Sociology Observer (edited by Dr. Tom Boland and Dr. Ray Griffin)
- Embracing Digital Delivery in Ireland’s New Employment Policy: Digital by Choice or Digital by Default by Antoinette Jordan
- Dole + Docility: On the Pacification Policy of the Welfare State by Ray Griffin
- Rethinking Care Through Social Welfare Administration by Aisling Tuite
- “Nobody Wants to Work Anymore”: A Critical Analysis by Zach Roche
Though just a selection is presented here, 2023 is set to be our busiest year yet for publications. To keep up to date on the latest work from our consortium, please visit our Twitter @SOUNEMPLOYMENT.
Other Activities
Piloting of HECAT Tool; MyLabourMarket
As the HECAT project nears its most exciting stages, testing has begun on our tool; MyLabourmarket. Based on initial work from our sociology teams, our technical partners have been hard at work getting MyLabourMarket piloting ready. Testing took place in September 2022, led by consortium members from Roskilde University and assisted by fellow project members from across the cohort. This took place in two testing sites; Ljubljana and Ptuj, Slovenia with the assistance of our partners The Employment Service of Slovenia (ESS). Based on the findings reported, iterations are currently being confirmed and carried out before the tool is re-piloted in early 2023.
Expert Interviews
At the heart of this project is the desire to create a tool that is ethical, and stakeholder-led. In this, it is vital that we learn from stakeholders throughout. This year, several teams across Denmark, France, Slovenia and Ireland have begun expert engagement, facilitating focus groups with interested stakeholders. These include caseworkers, PES employees, technical experts and the unemployed. It is hoped that continued engagement will assist in developing work that is aligned with stakeholders’ needs.
Though just a selection of highlights, it’s clear 2022 has been a busy year for the HECAT consortium. As winter breaks approach, we’re excited for what 2023 will bring! Below, you can find our 2022 Year in Review Newsletter.
Until 2023,
The HECAT Consortium