Socio-Technical Markets Research Group
The Socio-Technical Markets Research Group explores how markets emerge through the interaction of digital infrastructures, encryption technologies, AI, digital platforms, institutional frameworks, cultural norms, and social relations. Drawing on economic sociology and digital criminology, the research group examines how socio-technical configurations shape the organisation, governance, and everyday practices of licit and illicit economic exchanges. This includes the sociopolitical conditions under which crime, harm, and governance emerge. Its research focuses on digital and hybrid markets, with particular attention to illicit drug markets, platform governance, user practices, gender, and offline-online dynamics. The group also employs qualitative and mixed-methods research to the empirical study of social interactions, processes of trust-building and forms of social organisation within illicit online markets. The group is led by Dr. Meropi Tzanetakis at WU Vienna.
Research Activities
The Socio-Technical Markets Research Group conducts interdisciplinary social science research projects, contributes to national and international scholarly debates through publications and conference presentations, engages in third mission activities and public engagement, and collaborates with public institutions and civil society organisations. It also supports student supervision and early-career researchers working on socio-technical configurations, digital platforms, illicit drug markets, and mixed-methods research. Further information on the group's activities is available via the sections Research, News, Publications, Talks, and Teaching.
Research Group Members
Alexander Pelzer, BA, BSc (WU)
Research Assistant
Alexander is currently completing a Master’s degree in Socioeconomics and Philosophy and has been working at WU Vienna since 2025. His academic interests centre on social transformations in the information age, with a particular focus in his Master’s thesis on the influence of digital technologies on the constitution of the subject in the Kantian sense. As a research assistant, he contributes to the planning, conduct, and analysis of qualitative interviews, undertakes ethnographic research on social media, and supports Meropi in the preparation of research proposals and academic publications.
Projects
As part of the ongoing FWF-funded project “A Socio-Technical Framework for Online Drug Markets”, two substudies examine contemporary transformations of hybrid drug markets. The first, conducted in cooperation with the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), examines the role of darknet markets in the distribution of increasingly potent synthetic opioids and emerging supply shifts following Afghanistan’s 2022 opium ban, generating evidence relevant to prevention and policy interventions. The second substudy explores how gender relations attentive of intersecting forms of diversity shape engagement with digital infrastructures and socio-technical configurations. In collaboration with checkit! at Addiction Services Vienna, it further analyses public health implications of drug use, with particular attention to informing more inclusive harm reduction measures.
Funding
The Research Group’s work is supported through competitive national and institutional research funding. Current projects are funded by an Elise Richter Grant from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and a Matching Grant from WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Supervision and collaboration opportunities
The Socio-Technical Markets Research Group welcomes enquiries from students and early-career researchers interested in supervision and collaboration opportunities related to socio-technical configurations, hybrid environments and illicit drug markets. Interdisciplinary projects engaging with qualitative, digital, or mixed-methods approaches are particularly encouraged.
Ongoing supervisions
Constantin Coeler. Socio-Economic Embeddedness of Psychedelic Drug-Therapy Policies in Europe. Qualitative Analysis of Advocacy Coalitions in Switzerland, Germany and Czechia, PhD thesis, WU Vienna.
Jovana Zivkovic. Subjective Perceptions of Safety and Trust in the Use of Social Media and Messenger Apps, BA thesis, WU Vienna.
Completed supervisions
Michal Slezinski (2026). Is the European Union becoming a 'Super-Smart-Society'? Societal, strategic and technological comparison with Japan's Society 5.0., MA thesis, WU Vienna.
