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 is led by Dr. Meropi Tzanetakis at WU Vienna.
Research Group Members
.
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.
