Amber Lorraine Weekes

AMBER L. WEEKES, then a graduate student at Stanford University, Stanford, California, was awarded funding October 2016 to aid research on ‘Digitizing the Nation-State: The (De)materialization of Nationalism, Sovereignty, and Belonging in e-Stonia,’ supervised by Dr. Ian Hodder. The supported research took place between May 2017 and September 2017. During this period, the grantee conducted participant-observation at the Lift99 co-working space1 in Tallinn and pursued targeted ethnographic engagements with members of the Estonian e-Residency and data embassies team. Though sustained participant-observation with Estonian civic society organizations was not pursued, the grantee did complete 21 semi-structured interviews with Estonians not involved in Estonian e-governance, including citizens involved in heritage activism and the far-right youth group Sinine ‘ratus. Collectively, this research enabled the collection the following types of evidence: 1) field notes based on participant-observation with Estonian tech entrepreneurs; 2) field notes based on participant-observation with Estonian technocrats, including those involved with e-Residency and the data embassies initiative; and 3) interview transcriptions and notes based on semi-structured interviews with Estonian technocrats and egovernance users.