Project 7: Reconnecting for Sustainable Work Platforms // Aalborg University

The project will investigate how to design and establish physical spaces, legal, economic, and technological services, capable of promoting the emergence of platform cooperatives in the city of Aalborg. That implies co-designing, together with the cooperative movement and marginalised social groups as unemployed graduates or migrant workers, strategies that can allow the establishment of platform cooperatives at the local level.

PhD Researcher: Melike Kaplan 

I am a scholar-activist with a background in Economic and Organizational Sociology, Anthropology, and Literature. My work experience spans research, writing, consulting, and facilitation. Prior to this fellowship, I worked as a Community Care Leader at Waking Life—an association in Portugal that experiments with circular world-building through land stewardship of a national park, funded by an annual arts festival and regenerative educational initiatives.

My research interests revolve around feminist economics and post-growth theory. I’m interested in how we can transition from relationships defined by domination, exploitation, and competition to ones grounded in care and collaboration. To that end, I explore alternative development paradigms, governance practices, and economic models. I am particularly interested in how technological advancements can support this transition. I strive to ensure that my research is not only shaped by feminist, decolonial, and anticapitalist principles in content, but also in method.

My Reworlding project uses Participatory Action Research to explore how to co-design a Future Jobs Lab that will enable the emergence of platform cooperatives as a democratic alternative to traditional business models in the age of platform capitalism. In essence, the project seeks to understand how ecologically and socially regenerative forms of work can be made accessible to those systematically excluded from traditional labor markets in Aalborg.