From its start, MARKETS recruited and trained 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) across partner universities. Despite delays caused by COVID and the war in Ukraine, all ESRs were enrolled in doctoral programmes, supported by intersectoral supervision teams (academic, external, and non-academic mentors). Fellows completed structured training plans combining coursework, summer schools, secondments, and network events.
Research Work Packages
WP1 Institutional Framework: Five PhDs analysed informality in migration, gender, healthcare, taxation, and consumer behaviour. Outputs include mixed-methods studies of migrant labour brokers in Europe, ethnographies of women entrepreneurs in Kyrgyzstan, and analyses of tax evasion measurement.
WP2 Private Sector: Five PhDs studied informality in water governance, wine trade, procurement, labour market policies, and anti-corruption reforms. Results highlight how informal governance shapes resource allocation, state–business relations, and reform dynamics in contexts such as Uzbekistan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.
WP3 Social Roots: Five PhDs explored patient participation in healthcare, knowledge hiding in organisations, Western-educated elites in Kazakhstan, migrant entrepreneurship in Russia, and gendered labour in Uzbek bazaars. Findings advance understanding of identity, participation, and gendered economies.
Training & Capacity Building
ESRs completed ≥30 ECTS in doctoral training, ≥7 network events, and ≥1 summer school each.
All undertook secondments (academic/non-academic) of ≥3 months.
Fellows gained transferable skills in proposal writing, stakeholder engagement, data management, ethics, and public communication.
Dissemination & Exploitation
25+ peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Social Science & Medicine and Central Asian Survey.
22 policy briefs targeting OSCE, UNDP, WEF, OECD, and national ministries.
100+ public-facing outputs (blogs, podcasts, videos, photo stories).
Contribution to Global Encyclopaedia of Informality Vol. 3.
Creation of a Zenodo community (30+ open outputs, CC-BY licensing).
Milestones & Risk Mitigation
Recruitment, ethics clearances, fieldwork, secondments, training, and mid-term review validated.
Risks (COVID, war in Ukraine, regional instability) mitigated through project extensions, redeployment of fellows, online events, and termination of collaborations with Russia/Belarus.
Overall, all deliverables were achieved; some dissertations are still under defence but research results and outputs are secured.
