RESEARCH PORTFOLIO AT A GLANCE
The SEWL Research Portfolio is the evolving body of conceptual, empirical, comparative, and applied research through which the science is developed, tested, and refined through comparisons across populations, Labour Systems, and occupational settings.
Projects are at different stages of development and empirical maturity and address different components of the SEWL explanatory architecture. No single study is expected to capture the entire architecture; evidence instead accumulates across complementary studies, populations, Labour Systems, methods, and levels of analysis.
From Research Programme to Research Portfolio
The Research Portfolio translates the SEWL Research Programme into specific studies, research streams, occupational applications, comparative investigations, collaborations, and scholarly outputs through which SEWL propositions are investigated, tested, challenged, and refined.
Figure 14 presents a simplified overview of the major research streams and the complementary conceptual, applied, empirical, and developing research that constitute the SEWL Research Portfolio.
Figure 14
Major Research Streams
The SEWL Research Portfolio is organised around five interconnected research streams that provide
sustained lines of conceptual, methodological, and empirical investigation across populations, Labour Systems, occupational settings, and the lifecourse.
Working-Life Exposure Systems
This research stream investigates how multidomain working-life exposures are generated, configured, accumulated, and transformed across working lives, including their co-occurrence and potential interaction, temporal patterning, exposure-system phenotypes, and longitudinal exposure biographies.
A central question is whether Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies provide explanatory information beyond individual, isolated, or cross-sectional exposure measures.
Labour Systems and Population Health
This research stream investigates whether and how the institutional organisation of working life contributes to population differences in Working-Life Exposure Systems, health, Human Functioning, Functional Sustainability, workforce participation, and inequalities.
Research examines how Labour-System characteristics—including employment relations, working time, occupational protection, worker representation, income security, social protection, and technological governance—operate through exposure-generating processes to shape the distribution of exposures, protections, resources, opportunities, and constraints across populations.
A central question is: Do measurable differences in Labour-System characteristics contribute to systematic differences in Working-Life Exposure Systems and subsequent population-health and functional trajectories across contexts and over time?
Work-Structured Ageing
This research stream investigates the proposition that ageing and later-life functional trajectories may be partly structured by cumulative experiences across working life. It examines how employment histories, Working-Life Exposure Systems, and exposure biographies relate to heterogeneity in biological ageing, health, Human Functioning, work ability, disability, later-life participation, workforce exit, and retirement transitions.
A central question is: To what extent, through which pathways, and under which Labour-System conditions are ageing and later-life functional trajectories shaped by cumulative working-life experiences?
Human Functioning and Functional Sustainability
This research stream investigates how Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies may contribute to trajectories of physical, cognitive, psychological, social, and occupational functioning across adult life, including patterns of maintenance, decline, adaptation, and recovery.
A central question is: Which Working-Life Exposure Systems, exposure biographies, and Labour-System conditions are associated with more favourable or more adverse trajectories of Human Functioning and Functional Sustainability across the lifecourse?
Technology, AI, and Changing Working Life
This research stream investigates how artificial intelligence, automation, digitalisation, algorithmic management, platform work, robotics, surveillance technologies, and related technological transformations reorganise working life and its exposure-generating processes.
Rather than treating technological change simply as an additional occupational exposure, research examines how it may reshape employment arrangements, work organisation, autonomy and control, skill and task demands, working time, social relationships, resources, protections, opportunities, and constraints, thereby altering the configuration and distribution of Working-Life Exposure Systems.
A central question is: How does technological transformation reorganise exposure-generating processes, and with what consequences for Working-Life Exposure Systems, population health, inequalities, and Human Functioning across the lifecourse?
Together, these streams provide interconnected lines of investigation across the SEWL Research Portfolio.
Current Empirical Research
Current empirical research is concentrated in two complementary areas: research on European commercial drivers and other working populations using the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) and longitudinal European population research using SHARE. Each investigates specific SEWL propositions rather than attempting to capture the entire explanatory architecture.
European Commercial Driving and Working-Life Exposure Systems
Status: Active empirical research — EWCS dataset.
This research uses European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) data to investigate working conditions, multidomain Working-Life Exposure Systems, and health- and work-related outcomes among European commercial drivers and other working populations. Current research examines relationships between exposure-system configurations, working-life conditions, and health- and workforce-related outcomes, with particular attention to health burden and intention to leave. Additional outcomes of interest include work ability and safety.
SEWL proposition investigated: Whether multidomain Working-Life Exposure Systems provide explanatory information about health, functioning, safety, and workforce-related outcomes among commercial drivers and other working populations, and how these relationships vary across working-life contexts.
Working-Life Trajectories and Functional Ageing in Europe
Status: Active empirical research — SHARE dataset.
This research uses longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data to investigate how employment histories and working-life trajectories relate to later-life health, ageing, and Human Functioning. It provides an empirical setting for investigating the Work-Structured Ageing proposition that differences in later-life health and functioning may be partly structured by cumulative experiences across working life.
SEWL proposition investigated: Whether and how working-life histories and trajectories contribute to heterogeneity in later-life health, ageing, and Human Functioning across the lifecourse.
Conceptual and Applied Research across Occupational Settings
Selected working populations provide informative settings for developing and applying SEWL and related Working-Life-Exposome concepts because they combine complex multidomain exposure systems, distinctive forms of work organisation, and consequential health, safety, functioning, and workforce outcomes.
This work encompasses recently published and accepted scholarship, work currently under review, and research in development across commercial driving, military work, firefighting, and maritime work.
Commercial Driving and Transportation
Commercial driving provides a particularly informative setting for investigating how physical, psychosocial, organisational, temporal, technological, environmental, economic, and regulatory conditions co-occur, accumulate, and potentially interact across working lives.
Research examines how industry organisation, employment arrangements, scheduling, compensation, regulation, and technological change shape Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies, and how these relate to health, safety, Human Functioning, work ability, occupational continuity and exit, and workforce sustainability.
Military and Readiness-Dependent Work
Military and other readiness-dependent occupational systems provide distinctive settings in which health, Human Functioning, occupational performance, and sustained capacity are closely interconnected.
Research examines how occupational tasks, physical and environmental demands, deployment and scheduling, psychosocial conditions, technologies, and organisational structures generate and pattern multidomain Working-Life Exposure Systems, and how these systems may influence the maintenance, adaptation, recovery, and erosion of Human Functioning, readiness, and longer-term occupational capacity.
Firefighting and Emergency Response
Firefighting and emergency-response work combines chemical, physical, environmental, psychosocial, organisational, temporal, and behavioural exposures that may co-occur, accumulate, and potentially interact across working lives.
Research examines these exposures as multidomain Working-Life Exposure Systems while retaining the specificity of individual hazards required for causal investigation, surveillance, and prevention, with particular attention to cumulative burden, Biological Embodiment, Human Functioning, and potential leverage points for integrated prevention.
Maritime and Seafaring Work
Maritime and seafaring work provides a distinctive setting in which working and living conditions, environmental exposures, organisational arrangements, and social conditions are unusually interconnected across extended periods at sea.
Research examines how shipboard environments, working time and fatigue, occupational hazards, prolonged periods away from home, employment arrangements, and technological change shape Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies. Maritime work provides a particularly informative setting for investigating work-mediated nonwork exposures and the blurring of occupational and nonoccupational exposure environments, with potential consequences for health, safety, Human Functioning, and workforce sustainability.
Comparative European and International Research
Comparative research is central to SEWL because variation across Labour Systems, institutions, policies, and populations provides empirical leverage for investigating systems-level explanations of working life and population health. Europe provides a particularly valuable setting because of its diversity in employment relations, working time, occupational protections, worker representation, social protection, technological governance, and welfare institutions, together with extensive population-health data and research infrastructures.
Comparative investigation examines whether variation in Labour-System characteristics is associated with systematic differences in Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies, population health, Human Functioning, Functional Sustainability, workforce participation, and inequalities. Such comparisons require explicit attention to population and occupational composition, measurement equivalence, policy endogeneity, correlated institutional arrangements, migration, and contextual confounding; observed differences between countries or systems are not assumed to represent causal Labour-System effects.
Research extends beyond Europe to additional Labour Systems and populations. Cross-context comparison can help distinguish contextual patterning from relationships that are more consistent with hypothesised SEWL mechanisms and pathways. It can also identify potentially modifiable system characteristics. The objective is not to identify a universally “best” Labour System, but to ask: Which Labour-System characteristics, under which conditions and through which pathways, contribute to healthier, more equitable, and more functionally sustainable population trajectories?
Research in Development
The next phase of the SEWL Research Portfolio includes three proposed initiatives designed to provide more integrated, longitudinal, and comparative tests of its central propositions. These initiatives are in development rather than active empirical studies; their design, populations, data sources, collaborations, and implementation will evolve as the programme develops.
SEWL Prospective Cohort
Status: In development
A purpose-designed longitudinal cohort integrating contextual measures of Labour-System conditions and exposure-generating processes with repeated individual-level assessments of Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies, biological processes, health, and multidimensional Human Functioning.
The cohort would enable prospective investigation of how Working-Life Exposure Systems emerge and change over time; whether and through what processes exposure histories become biologically embodied; and how exposure and biological trajectories relate to subsequent health, Human Functioning, work ability, and Functional Sustainability.
SEWL proposition to be investigated: Whether and how Labour-System conditions and exposure-generating processes shape longitudinal Working-Life Exposure Systems and exposure biographies, and whether these histories contribute, through Biological Embodiment and other pathways, to subsequent health and Human Functioning trajectories.
Working-Life Exposure Biography Study
Status: In development
A longitudinal study designed to reconstruct multidomain working-life exposure histories and examine their relationships with subsequent health, ageing, and Human Functioning across the lifecourse. The study would characterise the configuration, timing, duration, sequencing, transitions, and accumulation of exposures across working lives. It would investigate whether exposure biographies provide explanatory information beyond measures of current exposure, individual exposures, or conventional cumulative exposure.
SEWL proposition to be investigated: Whether longitudinal exposure biographies provide explanatory information about subsequent health and Human Functioning trajectories beyond conventional approaches to occupational exposure measurement.
Cross-National Labour Systems and Population Health Study
Status: In development
A comparative study linking harmonised Labour-System indicators with individual- and population-level measures of exposure-generating processes, Working-Life Exposure Systems, health, and Human Functioning across countries.
SEWL proposition to be investigated: Whether and how Labour Systems operate through exposure-generating processes to contribute to the patterning of Working-Life Exposure Systems and subsequent population-health and Human Functioning trajectories across contexts.
Together, these initiatives are intended to provide increasingly direct and integrated empirical tests of SEWL propositions.
Figure 15 illustrates the continuing scientific development of the SEWL Research Portfolio, from conceptual development and empirical investigation toward increasingly integrated longitudinal and comparative research, causal and policy evaluation, and prevention-oriented scientific translation.
Figure 15
Current Portfolio Outlook
The SEWL Research Portfolio now spans scientific foundations and conceptual development, a growing body of published and accepted conceptual and applied scholarship and work under review, active empirical research using SHARE and EWCS, and a defined programme of research in development.
Across these components, the objective is cumulative: to determine which SEWL propositions are supported, which require modification or restriction, which may not withstand empirical testing, and which features of working-life systems represent potentially modifiable leverage points for population-health prevention.