The De Gruyter Handbook of Social Entrepreneurship Research responds to the growing need to understand social entrepreneurship as a dynamic, contested, and globally diverse field of inquiry. Bringing together leading scholars from across disciplines and regions, the Handbook moves beyond narrow definitions to examine how social value is imagined, organised, and contested across different institutional, cultural, and technological contexts. More than a synthesis of existing knowledge, the Handbook prefigures a more plural, reflexive, and globally grounded future for the field by bringing into conversation perspectives that have often developed in parallel. It highlights how social entrepreneurs, communities, and organisations enact desired and alternative futures in the present through innovative forms of organising, governance, and collective action.

A distinctive contribution of the Handbook is its focus on digitally enabled social entrepreneurship. The volume prefigures emerging debates around digital social innovation by exploring how platforms, data infrastructures, artificial intelligence, and digital networks are reshaping participation, coordination, and value creation. At the same time, it critically engages with tensions surrounding inclusion, power, surveillance, governance, and sustainability, positioning digital entrepreneurship as a key arena through which future social arrangements are negotiated and enacted.

The Handbook also prefigures a shift in the geography of knowledge production by placing the Global South at the centre of theorising. Through themes such as institutional experimentation, inclusive markets, Indigenous knowledge, resource-constrained innovation, and community-led transformation, it demonstrates how Global South contexts generate novel concepts, alternative models of organising, and promising directions for the future of social entrepreneurship research.