From 27 January, I will be doing a research stay at the CNRS research laboratory associated with the University of Aix Marseille, LEST (Laboratoire d'Économie et de Sociologie du Travail). There are several researchers here who have been working for decades on topics related to my doctoral thesis, such as hybrid organisations, cooperatives and the social economy. I will stay in Marseille until 28 February.
During my stay, in addition to working on my doctoral thesis, I am attending several seminars and have presented my ongoing work. On 11 February, I exposed my project and my two case studies on worker-recuperated firms and cooperative platforms at the monthly seminar of the research group on meta-organisations and the work axis Changes, Organisations, Transitions.
The week I arrived, I was able to attend the seminar “Meso-Level Perspectives on Paid Work in Contemporary Societies” organised by the IMERA Center, which allowed me to meet people working with different approaches that could be useful for the continuation of my research career.
At the end of the seminar, we visited one of my PhD case studies, Scop-Ti, and I translated the visit into English for non-French speakers.
This experience is allowing me to establish potential collaborations with researchers from the lab who specialise in social enterprises, the dual cooperative nature and the French social economy.. It was a good opportunity to discuss my work in progress, to refine certain topics of their expertise and to make decisions on how to proceed with the final writing of my dissertation. It was also a good opportunity to share experiences with PhD students who, like me, are at the end of their dissertation and are working on similar topics and case studies.
Alejandro Fortuny