About

The Alpine Community Economies Lab is a community-based research lab rooted in the Lagarina Valley in the Italian Alps. The lab experiments with practices of commoning informed by feminist and posthumanist approaches to the economy, livelihoods and the world at large. Its mission is to open up and diversify the imagination of what is possible and caring ways of life in times of climate crisis, biodiversity loss and social polarisation.

 

As part of the non profit organisation Brave New Alps and the community academy La Foresta, the Lab creates and supports experimental spaces of collective inquiry dedicated to practical engagements with  pressing social and environmental issues. In doing so, the activities are guided by the desire to trace transformative connections between local practices and global concerns.

 

The Lab is rooted in the Alps, Europe’s second largest biodiversity reservoir, home to 13,000 plant species, 30,000 animal species and 14 million humans across eight countries. The Alps are also vitally important for extra-Alpine areas, being for example the site of important transport routes, Europe’s water reservoirs and major recreational spaces. Moreover, the Alps count on a millenia old heritage of commons and commoning as key strategies of survival in harsh topographic and climatic conditions. We thus see the Alps as an inspiring place from which to work on global livelihood-related issues through local activations and explorations.

 

In its work, the Lab creatively grounds and explores the Alpine Convention’s Climate Action Plan 2.0, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the New Leipzig Charter for Urban Development and the New European Bauhaus initiative.

“Being-in-common – that is, community – can no longer be thought of or felt as a community of humans alone; it must become multi-species community that includes all of those with whom our livelihoods are interdependent and interrelated. ”

BY Katherine Gibson

 

CORE LAB TEAM OF PRACTICE-BASED RESEARCHERS

• Dr Bianca Elzenbaumer, feminist research-through-co-design, community economies
• Dr Maria Francesca De Tullio, legal studies and commons
• Dr Kate Rich, artist and radical administrator, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (FRICTIONS 101147188)
• Matteo Pra Mio, PhD candidate, pedagogy, interaction design and music
• Dr Paolo Plotegher, visual culture and mental health
• Dr Liise Lehtsalu, open science and research data management
• Fabio Franz, transformation design, visual communication and spatial practice
• Martina Dandolo, eco-social design and diversity organising
• Carlo Bettinelli, agro-ecology and participatory processes
• Chiara Mura, social work and social innovation processes
• Flora Mammana, transformation design, common land research and baking
• Carmen Gonzales-Miranda, forest management and environmental pedagogy
• Justine Hartwig, communication design and open science facilitation
• Panos Tsiamyrtzis Bakas, urban design
• Silvia Cohn, eco-social design, enviornmental studies and policy, project management
• Francesco Medaglia, social economics

 

Advisory board:
• Prof Katherine Gibson, Western Sydney University
• Dr Jenny Cameron, Community Economies Institute
• Prof. Kathrin Böhm, Centre for Plausible Economies & Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences

Networks and alliances:
• Community Economies Research Network
• Community Economies Institute
• Rural Commons Assembly
• Italian Network of Emerging Commons
• Commoning Spaces Network

Theory-practice relays the lab team activates:
• Comunità Frizzante – making drinks to make community
• La Foresta – community academy
• Forno Vagabondo – a mobile bread oven
• Sottobosco – an experiment in forest pedagogy

 

Former lab members:
• Kim Kaborda, Erasmus+ Trainee and sociologist (2020-2021)
• Irene Bettinelli, voluntary civil servant and herb expert (2020-2021)
• Marla Nichele, voluntary civil servant and eco-social designer (2020-2021)
• Angelica Cianflone, voluntary civil servant and eco-social designer (2020-2021)
• Irene Manfrini, voluntary civil servant and environmental activist (2020-2021)
• Sofia Set, forest pedagogy teacher (2020-2022)
• Elisabetta Monti, farmer and activist within the Via Campesina movement (2020-2023)
• Paulina Mimberg, communication design (2020-2023)

 

Support team at Eurac Research (2019-2021):
• Dr Thomas Streifeneder, head of the Institute for Regional Development
• Dr Harald Pechlaner, head of the Center for Advanced Studies
• Anna Silbernagl, team assistant
• Stefania Lochmann, team assistant
• Ieva Kudure, team assistant
• Dr Karina Kössler, Research & Development Office
• Dr Liise Lehtsalu, Open Access & Data Management
• Martin Angler, Science Communication

 

Visual communication:
• Nino Rizzo, graphic design of website and publications
• Veronica Martini, illustrations of Vallagarina 2060 and graphics of the Rural Commons Festival

 

From 2022 to 2023, the Lab was part of the Center for other Worlds at Lusófona University in Lisbon (PT).

 

Throughout 2019 to 2021, the lab was funded through a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (grant agreement no. 795641) and hosted at the Institute for Regional Development at EURAC Research (Bozen-Bolzano, Italy). The Habitat Unit, with Prof. Philipp Misselwitz of the Technical University Berlin acted as a second supporting institution.

 

So far the policy partners of the lab were: the Municipality of Rovereto, Tavolo Trentino per l’Economia Solidale, Trentino Sviluppo, EUSALP – working group 3, Permanent Secretariat of the Alpine Convention.