Research

• Timeframe: 2023-2026
• Funding: 219 000 EUR
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holder: Hector Charles Pagan
• Other Skytte staff: Elis Vollmer
• ETIS page

Buildings are responsible for 40% of Europe’s total energy consumption, and EU policy has prioritised the identification of dwellings and citizens at a higher risk of energy poverty in order to develop effective strategies for building renovation. In accordance with the energy efficiency first principle, building renovation must be prioritized when discussing the overall solution to energy poverty. In so doing, the least efficient building stock should be targeted first and split-incentive dilemmas and market failures should be addressed. Furthermore, addressing EP, like energy transition in general, should be socially just and inclusive. The main objective of the project is to empower and support vulnerable homeowners and renters living in multiapartment buildings through the renovation process. By identifying the main obstacles, and creating trustworthy support services that include homeowners, their associations, and building managers. CEESEN-BENDER will address the above issues within 5 regions in 5 CEE countries: Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia, Poland, Romania. It will be done by targeting Soviet-era multi-apartment buidlings.

• Timeframe: 2023-2025
• Funding: 167 742 EUR
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holder: Oleksii Kolesnykov
• Other Skytte staff: Piret Ehin
• ETIS page

The project seeks a more profound understanding of modern Ukrainian politics, with a focus on war related political processes and the functioning of democracy in wartime. It examines links between resilience and democracy and identifies 'red lines' that should not be crossed if Ukraine is to continue on a democratic path.

• Timeframe: 2023-2027
• Funding: 177 200 EUR
• Funder: Estonian Research Council
• Grant holder: Eiki Berg
• Other Skytte staff: Shpend Kursani, Ana Maria Albulescu, Kristel Vits, Butrint Berisha, Izzet Yalin Youksel
• ETIS page

Frozen conflicts resemble „no war, no peace“ situations where the adversaries have reached impasse and where no party is willing or able to change the status quo. Actually, conflicts which we term as „frozen“ may not be frozen at all because they manifest certain dynamics that is related to actor-based interactions. While retaining the potential for outbursts, they may descend into renewed violent conflict. But they may also come close to or even achieve conflict resolution. As frozen conflicts are tightly connected with the occurrence of de facto states - territorial contenders supported by external powers, then we aim to situate, explore, and explain the role of de facto states and other actors in shaping the conflict dynamics. This project has an ambition to bring the case-based knowledge together through a cross-case comparison and to explain the conditions leading to certain outcomes. While knowing how trajectories are conditioned we can influence the course of the conflict

• Timeline: 2023-2026
• Funding: 272 895
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holder: Hector Charles Pagan
• Other Skytte staff: Mariia Chebotareva, Olena Solohub, Anastasiia Turusinova
• ETIS page

Violent behaviors in the domestic context, by men towards their partners and family members, are often associated with life stressors, which are the events in a person’s life that bring about significant anxiety and stress, such as life transitions, loss and grief, experiences of trauma or victimization, loss of a job or career changes, or changes to family structure or among friends. Diminished access to the social determinants of health, including income insecurity, unemployment, inadequate housing and food insecurity, can also cause life stress. Increasing access to specialised victim AND perpetrator services is an important strategy for addressing domestic violence as a prevalent form of gender-based violence.

• Timeframe: 2023-2027
• Funding: 329 424 EUR
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holder: Hector Charles Pagan
• Other Skytte staff: Elis Vollmer, Louis John Wierenga
• ETIS page

The REMIT project aims to Reignite Multilateralism via Technology. Multilateralism is under attack and the EU is caught between the U.S. and China. While there are many ways that the decline in multilateralism affects the EU, none is more troublesome than rivalries in technology. Firstly, because of the sector’s impact on economic competitiveness and the size within economies that tech occupies. Secondly, tech is important to national security and future threats, including threats to democratic principles. Thirdly, technology is crucial to the solutions for global challenges. REMIT will create knowledge that generates policy recommendations and strategies that support the EU in reconceptualizing multilateral governance in four crucial policy areas: digital, biotechnology, security and defense, and financial technologies. REMIT researchers create this knowledge by employing the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to specific subsystems. The policy subsystem is the ACF’s unit of analysis. It is characterized by three components: the policy problem or issue; the scope of actors seeking to influence that policy; and a territorial domain or authority for policymaking. REMIT experts focus on subsystems that emerge from their expertise, analyzing the tensions and debates within each as well as defining the EU’s current role. Knowing the status quo makes the next step possible—to extrapolate ideas and to suggest pathways forward. In innovative scenario testing workshops with EU officials, important regional groupings (e.g., Mercosur, ASEAN, and African Union) and national officials, REMIT will develop policy recommendations that will give a remit to reignite multilateralism via technology. A reigniting that not only reacts to China’s rise as a systemic technology rival or Russia’s rise as a technology abuser or the dominance of large U.S.- based digital platforms, but that sets a clear vision for the future—one in which Europe plays a leading role.

• Timeframe: 2023-2028
• Funding: 44 333 EUR
• Funder: Estonian Research Council
• Grant holder: Liisa Talving
• Other Skytte staff: Ville Tapani Haapanen
• ETIS page

In past decades, Europe has witnessed major quakes that force us to rethink social conflict. A new divide has emerged that splits societies into two opposing blocs, pitting universalistic values against particularism and focusing on issues surrounding globalisation, e.g. European integration, immigration and, more recently, vaccination policy. This project examines the sources of these new conflict lines. It contests the dualistic view that explains the new divide either from the economic or cultural perspectives. Rather, the two dimensions are linked together by political actors that target economically vulnerable people but politicise cultural issues. I call this mechanism affective politicisation. The latter builds on the established notion of affective polarisation, but stresses that key to understanding the globalisation conflict lies in the supply side of the democratic process. By focusing on affective issues and using affective rhetoric, parties cultivate new societal divides.

• Timeframe: 2023-2025
• Funding: 105 000
• Funder: Estonian Research Council
• Grant Holder: Liisa Talving
• ETIS page

The support will fund the conducting of the 11th European Social Survey (ESS) wave in Estonia to ensure the country's participation in Europe's leading social science infrastructure. ESS is Europe's largest cutting-edge scientific study that collects data on individuals' attitudes, beliefs and behaviour. Data will be openly accessible. Estonia's participation in ESS is crucial for developing social sciences, ensuring the sustainability of world-class research and creating collaboration opportunities for Estonian scientists. The ESS Estonian data leads to more than 100 scientific publications across disciplines per year. Data is used by students and scientists, but also non-academic interest groups such as public offices, NGO-s and private companies. Results gain a lot of media attention. The ESS 11th wave focuses largely on health inequality. Deepening health inequality is considered one of the key problems of Estonia's health system, making the topic highly societally relevant.

• Timeframe: 2022-2024
• Funding: 349 188 EUR
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holder: Hector Charles Pagan
• Other Skytte staff: Elis Vollmer, Hanna Laius, Mariia Chebotareva, Lenard Benjamin Milich
• ETIS page

Our primary objective is to build capacity in 6 carbon intensive regions in 6 countries in the CEE for holistic regional Energy and Climate Action Plans (ECAPs) aligned with NCEP national targets supporting the Green Deal, and will involve marginalized and vulnerable groups, especially energy-poor households. A second objective is to assist municipalities to formulate, fund, and implement their ECAPs aligned with regional ones. At both levels, extensive capacity building will be extended to assist with building ECAPs. Drawing municipalities into energy regions will help cross-pollinate ideas, share knowledge and tasks, and apply for financing. Public sector capacity building (WP2, WP3) will help (a) formulate a holistic ECAP with energy provisions and carbon footprint reduction while improving climate-sensitive social goods - mobility, parks, playgrounds, clean air and water, biodiversity conservation; (b) address energy poverty - heating/cooling, adequate ventilation/lighting, domestic hot water, cooking; (c), attend to constituents and act on behalf of their needs; (d) understand financing options and how to apply for these; and (e) work with the private sector to mute opposition to the CET and to encourage and incorporate funding of ECAP initiatives by business (WP5). A just CET needs to maximize support, minimize opposition, and overcome apathy, requiring social science/social psychology theory to be applied (WP3). Non-public sector stakeholders (key players, context setters, the crowd, and subjects) will each be targeted by specific social and conventional media outreach (WP6). Dissemination will be (a) upward to national levels, the CoM, and the EU for use in energy transition planning (WP5, WP6); (b) across a broader CEE geography via CEESEN, a recently established NGO, to have by the end-of-project 2500 members using its online platform to share best practices, lessons learnt, and ideas that can advance the EU’s climate goals (WP6).

• Timeframe: 2022-2025
• Funding: 119 688 EUR
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holder: Hector Charles Pagan
• Other Skytte staff: Mihkel Solvak, Sander Maripuu
• ETIS page

SoBigData RI, with its tools and services, empowers researchers and innovators through a platform for the design and execution of large-scale data science and social mining experiments, open to users with diverse backgrounds, accessible on cloud (aligned with EOSC guidelines), and also exploiting supercomputing facilities. SoBigData RI will render social mining experiments more efficiently designed, adjusted, and repeatable by non-data scientists' domain experts by pushing the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable) and FACT (Fair, Accountable, Confidential and Transparent) principles. SoBigData RI will orient resources from multiple perspectives: e-infrastructures and online services developers; big data analytics and AI; complex systems focussed on modelling social phenomena; ELSEC (Ethical, Legal, SocioEconomic and Cultural) aspects of data protection (as defined by the HLEG-AI); privacypreserving techniques. SoBigData RI PPP will move our RI forward from the simple awareness of ethical and legal challenges in social mining to the development of concrete tools that operationalize ethics with value-sensitive design, incorporating values and norms for privacy protection, fairness, transparency, and pluralism.

• Timeframe: 2022-2026
• Funding: 353 766 EUR
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holder: Piret Ehin
• Other Skytte staff: Martin Mölder, Liisa Talving, Edgars Eihmanis, Bogdan Romanov
• ETIS page

INCA project investigates the impact that so-called digital platforms have on European democracies and institutions. Indeed, while promoting economic growth and labour transformations, these platforms pose challenges to policymakers and citizens in relation to people’ participation in decision-making processes, wealth inequalities and erosion of trust into public institutions. In particular, socalled GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) are becoming more and more infrastructures for opinion-making, labour organization and political debate. Their increasing power in shaping and influencing such issues through lobbying, industrial relations and cultural impact opened up a wide debate on the way to deal with these transformations. While European societies grew up based on liberal democracies and institutions with their capacity to sustain a coordinated market economy, today their role seems to be reduced because of the difficulties to regulate platforms’ corporate power that spread through politics, economy and culture.

INCA aims to

• define forms to sustain trust in institutions and new models of governance capable to combine the growth of platforms with social inclusion and citizens participation in decision making processes;

• stimulate alternative business models and industrial relations so to make GAFAM and platforms accountable to social fairness while preserving their innovation;

• to clarify the way GAFAM influence European citizens opinion conditioning democratic processes.

Exploring the socio-historical roots behind platforms growth and the erosion of a coordinated market economy, collecting solid data on GAFAM lobbying, industrial relations and opinion-making, and producing participatory actions for the empowerment of democratic processes and citizens’ engagement, INCA contributes to instil greater democratic accountability and inclusion in economic processes prompted by digital transformations.

• Timeframe: 2022-2024
• Funding: 363 099 EUR
• Funder: Erste Foundation
• Grant holder: Leonore Riitsalu
• ETIS page

Providers of financial services and financial education, and policy-makers designing national strategies for financial education have been working for decades with the ultimate aim of increasing financial well-being. Yet there is ample evidence of individuals not taking sufficient action to secure their long-term financial well-being, and being in a financially vulnerable state in case of losing their income, even in middle- and higher income. This implies humans need more than financial information and access to services to take sufficient care of their financial well-being. The need for shifting the focus form financial education to financial well-being (or financial health) both in the financial sector and in policy has been recently emphasized by several institutions. They highlight the importance of measuring financial well-being in locally relevant module, engaging private and public sector in the behaviourally informed initiatives for increasing it, and note the need for research into ways of measuring and increasing it. While most of the research on financial well-being is focused on financial behaviour (e.g., borrowing, lending, mortgages, saving, pension, etc.) and financial tools (e.g. planners, credit ratings, different apps, etc.) then instead we should look into the needs and wants behind the behaviour. In order to increase financial well-being we need to see behind the instruments and institutions into the behaviour, needs, wants and desires of the people to design tools and new interventions for bettering financial well-being through new windows of opportunity. This can be achieved by applying design thinking and behavioural insights. We have proposed a 3-year research project to Erste Foundation where we first study the deeper meaning of financial well-being for individuals in seven countries, based on the findings develop and test a broader set of tools for increasing financial well-being, develop measures of financial well-being, and propose practical implications for financial institutions, policymakers, providers of financial education, and NGO-s for increasing financial well-being of individuals and societies. The international interdisciplinary research team includes experts of financial education, policy, behavioural insights, psychology, economics and design thinking.

• Timeline: 2022-2024
• Founding: 118 920 EUR
• Founder: Estonian Research Council
• Grant holder: Edgars Eihmanis
• Other Skytte staff: Piret Ehin
• ETIS page

The project investigates the governance of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the EU’s post-pandemic investment fund of 672.5 b euro. Specifically, it studies the effects of the European Semester’s Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs) on national policy, as RRF’s Recovery and Resilience Plans are formulated and implemented by the European Commission, national governments and civil society. Building on the literature on the socio-economic policy coordination in the EU, the project extends the conventional conception of CSRs’ “effectiveness” and investigates how EU conditionality can shape national policy debate itself. Methodologically, the project applies “contextual process tracing” to study five “country-policy” cases in two of EU’s key subregions: Southern Europe (GR, PT, ES) and the Baltics (EE, LV). Combining academic excellence with high policy relevance, the project will provide cutting-edge insights for European and national policy makers, and scholars alike.

• Timeframe: 2022-2024
• Funding: 118 920 EUR
• Funder: Estonian Research Council
• Grant holder: Liisi Veski
• Other Skytte staff: Eva Piirimäe (Supervisor)
• ETIS page

This project focuses on the history of co-operative thought in Estonia in the years 1900–1940. Making use of the methods of intellectual history and archival sources, the project studies how co-operation was understood and conceptualised by some of its leading advocates, and how the co-operative movement was used as a way of reining in the influence of the central administration and fostering the Estonian-speaking civil society in the last decades of the Russian Empire and in interwar Estonia (1918–1940). The project is based on the theories of intrastate federalism and continuity of Estonian federative thought. The project will also attempt to determine the transnational models and intellectual influences that influenced the Estonian co-operative thought. In summary, the project will seek to understand the co-operative movement as a central element in the history of the Estonian-speaking civil society and formation of the Estonian nation state.

• Timeframe: 2022-2024
• Funding: 66 899 EUR
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holder: Hector Charles Pagan
• Other Skytte staff: Hanna Laius, Elis Vollmer, Anastasiia Turusinova
• ETIS page

The general goal of the project is to develop environmental awareness among university students and to spread the thought of sustainable development among the widest possible age groups at events that attract large audience. We are also committed to develop an innovative online course material and to mainstream sustainable development in all curricula for higher education students. Recognizing the convincing power of young influencers, the project aims to reach out to all age groups of audience at cultural events and festivals in the various European Capitals of Culture to encourage environmentally conscious activity and to be active members and beneficiaries of sustainable development. Furthermore, our goal is to equip students with communication tools and sustainable attitude to become effective advocates for advancing EU green economy and culture.

Message: To teach as many people as possible to think greener, to believe in sustainable development not only in environmental, but also in the social and economic spheres.

The 20th century concept was to “think globally and act locally”. We believe in the idea of “thinking local, acting globally’ is the 21st century phenomenon, as influencer can blog an idea in their room in front of the computer and have a huge global effect in quick time! The place where we are living is not just about the environment but rather the way of life. Local values remain where you live. This approach is in harmony with the value of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) as well.

• Timeframe: 2021-2025
• Funding: 514 700 EUR
• Funder: Estonian Research Council
• Grant holder: Alar Kilp
• Other Skytte staff: Elena Pavlova, Heiko Pääbo, Martin Mölder, Oksana Belova-Dalton, Lelde Luik, Maili Vilson, Aigerim Nurseitova, Azniv Tadevosyan, Kristiina Vain
• ETIS page

Relations between Russia and the Baltic states, Estonia in particular, have been an important testing ground for constructivist approaches in the discipline of International Relations. It has been demonstrated that the patterns of conflict and occasional cooperation have been determined by the dynamics of national identity on both sides. While existing studies focus on the national identity discourses of elites, this project creates comprehensive interpretivist datasets focusing on wider societal discourses. It is part of a global network ‘Making Identity Count’, whose scope so far includes only great powers. By adding Estonian data and expanding the already existing database on Russia, the project team re-assesses the bilateral relations based on a comparative analysis of the two countries’ identities through time. It identifies the circumstances under which popular views of national identity can impact foreign policy, which can be used in policy planning and risk assessment.

• Timeframe: 2020-2024
• Funder: European Social Survey European Research Infrastucture - ESS ERIC
• Grant holder: Leonore Riitsalu
• ETIS page

We proposed a longitudinal financial well-being module to the European Social Survey online panel CRONOS-2 for analysing financial well-being in Europe in turbulent times caused by the pandemid. We will analyse the changes within and between countries, and study the determinants of financial well-being. Project partners are Prof. Fred van Raaij from Tilburg University and Assistant Professor Kai Ruggeri from Cambridge and Columbia university. The data will be collected in 2021-2022. Based on the results, we will give policy recommendations for indicating the more vulnerable groups and for minimisng the decline in financial well-being, prevention of mental health problems and protection of overall well-being.

• Timeframe: 2020-2024
• Funding: 683 450 EUR
• Funder: Estonian Research Council
• Grant holder: Eva Piirimäe
• Other Skytte staff: Juhan Saharov, Semen Reshenin, David Ilmar Lepasaar Beecher, Hent-Raul Kalmo, Oliver William Rowe
• ETIS page

Self-determination of peoples is one of the key normative principles in contemporary politics. Yet its meaning and implications are notoriously difficult to pin down. The project rests on the thesis that uncovering the concept's historical origins will help to illuminate these uncertainties and the ways in which they are exploited in international politics. Experimenting with the approach of ‘serial contextualism’, the project seeks to offer a novel transnational intellectual history of self-determination from the Enlightenment to the end of the Cold War (including its links to related terms such as popular sovereignty, principle of nationality, self-government). The project’s main focus is on continental European political and international thought, while it also explores some of its global transformations. One of the hypotheses of the project is that there is a forgotten (but still usable) tradition of federalist thinking about self-determination originating in the Enlightenment.

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• Timeframe: 2019-2024
• Funding: 2 486 638 EUR
• Funder: European Commission
• Grant holders: Hector Pagan, Mihkel Solvak
• Other Skytte staff: Elis Vollmer, Varje Kuut, Piret Ehin, Vincentius Martinus Franciscus Homburg, Biao He, Stefan Dedovic, Logan Emily Carmichael, Bogdan Romanov, Art Alishani, Kerli Klock, Andres Võrk, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Robert Krimmer, Mariia Maksimova
• ETIS page

The aim of the ECePS – the ERA Chair in e-Governance and Digital Public Services is to strengthen the Center of IT Impact Studies (CITIS), a research unit in the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu (UTARTU) so that it can act as a world leader in the field of research on e-governance, public e-services and data driven public innovation.

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Research Professorship in Russian Studies 2023-2024

Limits and opportunities of civic activism in contemporary Russia (2023-2024)

Science diplomacy in the service of Estonia's foreign and security policies (2023-2024)

Countering Disinformation and Increasing Media Literacy among Russian-speaking Communities in Estonia (2022-2024)