Timeline: 2024-26

Funding Organization: Swiss National Science Foundation, Doc.CH 

Keywords: Digital Innovation,  Entrepreneurship, Welfare, Citizenship

Although the phenomenon of entrepreneurial hubs has recently come under scrutiny in the social sciences, previous research has focused on their role in incubating private technology companies and thus spearheading digital innovations. Using anthropological perspectives and ethnographic methods, Edouard Zeller starts from the premise that entrepreneurial hubs are becoming increasingly important for experimenting with new modes of governing entrepreneurial citizens and building the welfare state in Europe. Building on two burgeoning strands of literature on innovation and welfare restructuration across Europe, his research asks: how are the ideas and practices of entrepreneurship and social innovation shaping new models of the European welfare state and citizenship? Drawing on 15 months of ethnographic research in a recently inaugurated entrepreneurial hub in Lausanne, Switzerland, he will study how the phenomenon of social innovation, actively supported by Swiss public authorities, translates into new ways to conceptualise and deliver social welfare. Next to advancing an understanding of how European welfare states are changing in the 21st century, this research sheds new light on the impact of entrepreneurial hubs' global presence on work subjectivities and citizenship.