Projects
Solidarity Lost in Implementation? Social Mobility and Belief in Meritocracy Shaped by School Choice Policies (EDUMERIT) (2026-2031)
Educational choices shape futures, influence life chances, and are among the most significant factors in social mobility. Despite political and academic consensus on avoiding early selection, inequalities in educational opportunities are on the rise, even in systems that aim for equity or discourage parental choice. Paradoxically, the belief that today’s educational opportunities are meritocratically earned is growing, reducing the demand for inclusive education. EDUMERIT aims to explain the policy feedback of school choice implementation by revealing its contextually embedded effects on parental experiences and fairness beliefs. It shows how varying exposure to educational selectivity and political-social constraints, shaped by stakeholders' discretion and discourses, result in discrepancies between real and perceived outcomes, as well as related fairness judgements. It breaks through the state of the art in studying policy feedback effects in shifting the focus from policy design to policy implementation, and from broader popular attitudes to parental fairness reasoning in school choice. It offers a bold new conceptualization to define under which conditions feedback effects in education result in the rising meritocracy beliefs at the expense of re-distributional demand. It sets out a comparative nested empirical design to reveal parental school choice experiences and related fairness reasoning by combining cross-European evidence with survey experiments, qualitative interpretive interviews and social media analysis in Estonia, Poland, and Sweden. EDUMERIT innovates by addressing endogeneity in education policy feedback effects and advancing a relational approach to fairness reasoning. It develops the role of ‘forward-looking’ social mobility in the broader fairness debate, elucidating inequalities that matter. It strengthens the policy and politics of inclusive education by enhancing the compatibility between meritocracy and solidarity of welfare policies.
https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Projects/Display/6e8f2c4a-7b63-416e-a191-c979618ba823
The project is funded by the EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL EXECUTIVE AGENCY (ERCEA).
Team leader Prof. Dr. Triin Lauri (triin.lauri@tlu.ee)
Navigating the Next Normal: Innovative Approaches to Enhancing Youth’s Education-Employment Transitions in Post-COVID-19 Europe (NEXT-UP) (2025-2028)
NEXT-UP aims to explore and forecast the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the transition of youth from school/education to work/employment (YTSTW), focusing on co-creating evidence-informed, future-oriented policies and programmes, alongside innovative stakeholder engagement. The project emphasises inclusivity, particularly supporting disadvantaged groups for equitable job access. To achieve the ambitious goal, our interdisciplinary and multi-profile consortium with prominent academic and NGO partners from nine EU countries enhanced with international advisory board, applies interdisciplinary approaches. Our conceptual lens integrates the Quadruple Helix Model for social innovation with concepts of agency between employability and employer-ability, intersectionality, and policy learning, to enhance theoretical understanding. It focuses on the nexus between youth employment policies, stakeholder perceptions, and youth agency in educational and career choices.
Informed policies and sustained social innovations through NEXT-UP are expected to lead to responsive and resilient educational and employment systems in Europe, innovative educational programmes, and enhanced support for young people entering the workforce. This will significantly impact the formation of social innovation ecosystems to address youth employment challenges in the post-pandemic era and promote social and economic inclusion across Europe.
The project is funded by the European Union (European Horizon program).
https://www.nextup-project.eu/
Team leader Prof. Dr. Kadri Täht (kadri.taht@tlu.ee)
Encouraging a digital and Green transition through Revitalized and Inclusive Union-Employer Negotiations (EGRUiEN) (2025-2028)
The EGRUiEN project aims to answer the question of how best to ensure a just green and digital transition through social dialogue institutions and practices, to protect, represent and include precarious and non-standard workers, and to protect affected workers currently in primary labour market jobs from falling into precarity. Europe is undergoing a period of rapid, fundamental transition, which is affecting production, employment, job design and skill requirements in many industries, such as in the sector cases EGRUiEN investigates, automotive, energy, on-demand transportation/taxi, and care services. This presents contradictory goals: for economic and environmental reasons the transition must occur as quickly as possible, yet this fuels processes of creative destruction that undermines the efficacy of social dialogue. Social dialogue, however, has often been a tool to guide transitions. EGRUiEN will research how past social dialogues have managed similar transitions, and how current social dialogues are faring. Through participatory action research with actual and potential social partners, EGRUiEN will create a research basis to revitalize social dialogue to manage the green and digital transition. This will providing us with research-based tools for more inclusive and effective social dialogue.
The project is funded by the European Union (European Horizon program).
Team leader Dr. Kairit Kall (kairit.kall@tlu.ee)
VET Participation, Retention, and Educational Policies in the Wake of Covid 19 – a Cross-Country Exploration (VETPREP) (2025-2027)
The VETprep project seeks to understand and address the challenges in Vocational Education and Training (VET) related to student identification, participation, and retention across various European contexts, focusing on students from diverse backgrounds. It examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sector and explores policies and strategies in Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Scotland, and Spain through comparative studies. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach and mixed methods, the project investigates factors affecting VET student engagement, including demographics and socio-economic backgrounds, by analyzing longitudinal data and conducting in-depth interviews with selected students. This research aims to provide insights into young people's educational paths in post-pandemic Europe, highlighting differences in socio-economic status and educational aspirations, as well as differences between the pre- and post-pandemic cohorts. VETprep’s combination of generalized knowledge and individual narratives will offer a nuanced picture of Youths in the postpandemic Europe. Furthermore, with a comparative focus on differences across the European Countries and across different young people according to socioeconomic status, academic achievements, etc., we get the opportunity to understand both the consequences and relevant actions in the light of individual differences and varying societal, political, and educational frameworks in the five European countries. The project aims to help policymakers and other stakeholders (a) meet their obligations under the EPSR (everyone has the
right to quality and inclusive education, training and lifelong learning, including reducing the NEET rate to 9% by 2030) (b) implement the Council Recommendation on VET for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience (c) meet the goals of Pathways to School Success, including reducing Early Leaving from Education (d) meet UN SDGs 4, 8, 9 & 10.
The project is funded by the European Union (European Horizon program).
Team leader Prof. Dr. Marge Unt (marge.unt@tlu.ee)
Longitudinal Educational Achievements: Reducing iNequalities (LEARN) (2024-2027)
Europe is home to some of the most highly educated societies in the world. However, deep inequalities in education remain both within and between countries in Europe. Inequalities in learning outcomes, access to education and final educational attainment in Europe have been worsening and it is important to understand how socio-economic status, gender, ethnic and migrant status are associated with inequalities over the life-course. For this a longitudinal approach is needed and project LEARN (Longitudinal Educational Achievements: Reducing iNequalities) will highlight short-, medium- and long-term patterns of inequalities with a view to supporting educational policymaking in being able to robustly address these inequalities with interventions which are evidence based. Using a case study approach in nine carefully selected countries which capture the diversity of Europe’s education systems, LEARN will map and collect existing data providing original analysis of a range of high-quality education focused longitudinal educational data sets across Europe. LEARN will identify interventions that compensate educational inequalities by providing a synthesis of existing work across Europe examining specific trends in educational inequalities and interventions intended to reduce them. LEARN will then go on to develop tools for policymakers related to the findings of longitudinal analysis which support them in the policy making process. Through improving the evidence base for education policy making, the positive impact of LEARN is likely to be felt for decades to come.
The project is coordinated by University of Helsinki and the consortium is made up of eight participants: Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, University of Turku, University of Milan, European University Institute, Babeş-Bolyai University, Tallinn University, Maastricht University and Trinity College Dublin. The Project also has four partners: University of Lausanne, University of Zurich, The Manchester Metropolitan University and University College London.
The project is funded by the European Union (European Horizon program).
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101132531
Team leader Prof. Dr. Marge Unt (marge.unt@tlu.ee); Co-lead Prof. Dr. Kadri Täht (kadri.taht@tlu.ee)
Growing Up in Digital Europe preparation phase (GUIDEPREP) (2022-2026)
The Growing Up in Digital Europe Preparatory Phase (GUIDEPREP) project further develops the research infrastructure (RI) necessary to implement the GUIDE birth cohort study. This preparatory work will take place across 2022 to 2025 to ready the RI for the full-scale piloting of the GUIDE in 2026 and the first full wave of data collection in 2027. Once operational, GUIDE will collect data about individual children growing up in Europe until those children are aged 24-years in approximately 2053.
GUIDE will be Europe’s first comparative birth cohort study of children’s and young people’s wellbeing. The aim of the GUIDE study is to track children’s personal wellbeing and development, in combination with key indicators of children’s homes, neighbourhoods, and schools, across Europe. GUIDE will be an accelerated cohort survey including a sample of infants as well as a sample of school age children. Each Member State and Associated Country will provide nationally representative samples that are designed to retain statistical power throughout the lifetime of the study. The harmonized design will create the first internationally comparable, nationally representative, longitudinal study of children and young people in Europe.
Currently the GUIDE RI is in its preparatory phase, which involves the establishment of necessary operational procedures and further crystallisation of the study concept and design. To realise the GUIDE full-scale pilot in 2026 and first wave of fieldwork in 2027, the RI needs to develop administratively, technologically, financially, scientifically, and legally. This GUIDEPREP proposal lays out clear aims for these developments in an interlocking system of activities that are shared across consortium partners and managed by the GUIDE leadership team.
The project is funded by the European Union (European Horizon program).
https://twitter.com/EuroCohort
Team leader Dr. Gerli Nimmerfeldt (gerli.nimmerfeldt@tlu.ee)
Centre of Excellence for Personalised Medicine (2024-2030)
The project focuses on key advancements in research the transformation of healthcare needs in the era of personalized medicine. The team will (i) create risk prediction models which consider explicitly ancestry, sex, age, and lifestyle factors. These models aim to predict chronic health disorders earlier, improving patient outcomes, reducing costs, and offering PM for the whole society; (ii) explore differences in perception of PM in the socety to tailor dissemination activities; (iii) develop novel biomarkers using immunoprofiles & cell-free DNA enhancing multi-omic risk models; (iv) validate the feasibility of PM approaches for early detection of parkinsonism and lipid lowering intervention for ishemic heart disease. Genetic insights and early markers enable advanced tools for predicting disease risks, promoting early interventions, and reducing healthcare burdens.
The project is lead by University of Tartu. Partners: Tallinn University, Protobios OÜ, and Tervisetehnoloogiate Arenduskeskus AS.
The project is funded by The Ministry of Education and Research.
Team leader Prof. Dr. Marge Unt (marge.unt@tlu.ee)
Secure, Dignified and Just? A paradigm shift in the comparative study of social protection (WELFAREEXPERIENCES) (2023-2028)
The overall aim of the project is to help advance academic knowledge and contribute to making claimant experiences better. To do this, the project will collect innovative, in-depth qualitative data and conduct new surveys of claimants in Estonia, Hungary, Norway, Spain and the UK. By analysing benefits in five countries, the research team will be able to look at how claimant experiences are affected by everything from particular interactions (e.g. particular conversations or messages as part of their claim) to broad, country-wide factors (e.g. wider levels of trust that people have in different systems).
The project is a collaboration between King’s College London and seven other research organisations: the University of Kent (UK), Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway), Tallinn University (Estonia), Praxis (Estonia), Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) and the Center for Social Sciences (Hungary). It also involves collaboration with seven organisations that work with people who have lived experience of claiming: EPIK (Estonia), EAPN Spain, MEOSZ (Hungary), Velferdsalliansen EAPN Norway , APLE Collective (Thrive Teeside and Start Point)(UK), Inclusion Scotland, and Poverty Alliance.
The grant is a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, which is part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme.
https://welfare-experiences.org/
Team leader Dr. Triin Lauri (triin.lauri@tlu.ee)