Governing a Moving Target
Two New European Doctoral Networks on the Governance
of Transformative Technologies and the Future of Work
When technologies transform faster than the institutions designed to govern them, the gap becomes a governance problem.
The Technical University of Munich (TUM), together with the TUM Think Tank, will coordinate REGULAIRE (Regulatory Learning for the Governance of Transformative Technologies), a new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network funded under Horizon Europe alongside a cross-sectoral consortium of universities, regulatory bodies, international organisations, and industry partners. TUM is also a partner in a second network in the same call: EMANAIRE (Empowering Human Agency in AI-Augmented Futures of Work), coordinated by BI Norwegian Business School, which examines how generative and agentic AI are reshaping work, leadership, and human agency inside organisations. Across both networks, 30 doctoral candidates will be trained at the intersection of technology, governance, and society.
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) will coordinate REGULAIRE (Regulatory Learning for the Governance of Transformative Technologies), funded through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions under Horizon Europe, a programme among the most competitive in European research funding. The network will train 15 doctoral candidates through collaboration between universities, regulatory bodies, international organisations, and other partners working at the interface of technology, governance, and public policy.
The problem REGULAIRE is designed to address is practical and urgent. AI and other fast-moving technologies require consequential choices under time pressure and uncertainty: what to regulate, which instruments are likely to work, and whether existing frameworks remain fit for purpose as technologies evolve. Institutions not only have to define initial rules; they need to build the capacity to keep learning as those rules are put into practice, to absorb evidence, compare approaches, involve relevant expertise, and revise frameworks over time. REGULAIRE studies this lived institutional challenge of how this learning happens, and under what conditions it becomes more systematic, inclusive, and cumulative.
At TUM, the project is led by Urs Gasser, Dean of the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, together with Co-PI Sandra Cortesi, Professor for Participation and Diversity in Digital Societies at the School of Medicine and Health, who both serve as PIs at the TUM Think Tank. The project builds on TUM’s distinctive position at the intersection of technology, governance, public policy, and societal impact, including the work of the TUM Think Tank and its research-to-action approach to society-centered innovation.
“Fast-moving technologies challenge institutions not only to make good rules, but to keep learning while those rules are being implemented,” says Urs Gasser. “REGULAIRE is designed around this question: how can regulatory systems become more adaptive, evidence-informed, and capable of learning across contexts without losing sight of democratic values, public accountability, and societal needs?”
Sandra Cortesi emphasizes the participatory dimension of the project: “Regulatory learning is not only about how institutions process evidence; it is also about whose knowledge and experiences shape that evidence in the first place. REGULAIRE will train doctoral candidates to study how regulators, researchers, practitioners, civil society, and affected communities can learn together, and why participation and diversity are central to effective and legitimate governance.”
The research agenda focuses on regulatory learning: how institutions generate, absorb, and use knowledge from evidence, supervision, implementation, stakeholder engagement, and cross-jurisdictional comparison. The project will also examine regulatory sandboxes and other experimental settings, and how lessons from implementation feed back into policy and regulatory design.
The academic consortium brings together expertise in law, policy and governance, communication, technology policy, public values, and organisational research. In addition to TUM and the TUM Think Tank, partners include BI Norwegian Business School, the University of St. Gallen, the University of Amsterdam, Maastricht University, Lund University, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, the University of Copenhagen, and Politecnico di Milano.
"REGULAIRE shows the value of European inter-university collaboration: no single institution can address the governance challenges of fast-moving technologies alone. By bringing together universities and regulators, this consortium gives us a unique opportunity to train doctoral candidates in a genuinely European, interdisciplinary environment, while working on real-world problems that matter for institutions, organisations, and society", says Christian Fieseler, professor of communication management at BI Norwegian Business School and fellow at the TUM Think Tank, who is a co-leader of REGULAIRE.
REGULAIRE also includes non-academic partners working in digital regulation, data protection, media, public administration, and AI governance. This close collaboration with practice means that doctoral candidates will work with the institutions and communities where many of the central questions of regulatory learning arise.
Through its coordination of REGULAIRE, TUM will contribute to a growing European effort to build the knowledge, capacities, and institutional infrastructures needed to govern transformative technologies in ways that are adaptive, evidence-informed, and oriented toward the public interest.
The TUM Think Tank is also excited to collaborate within EMANAIRE (Empowering Human Agency in AI-Augmented Futures of Work), a second Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network coordinated by BI Norwegian Business School. Where REGULAIRE asks how institutions govern transformative technologies, EMANAIRE asks what those technologies are doing inside organisations, how generative and agentic AI are reshaping leadership, workflow design, collaboration, and the longer-term prospects for skills and careers.
Securing involvement in two Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Networks reflects TUM's distinctive position at the intersection of technology, governance, and societal impact and the approach to research-to-action work that the TUM Think Tank has been building over the past years. The goal, across both projects, is the same: to contribute to a European effort to build the knowledge, capacities, and institutional infrastructures needed to govern transformative technologies in ways that are adaptive, evidence-informed, and oriented toward the public interest.