The Community Economies Research Network (CERN) is holding its seventh LIVIANA International Online Conference, 2 to 13 November 2026. The program has now been released and registrations are open.
LIVIANA is a decentralised and FREE series of exchanges and symposia that runs for two weeks, providing an opportunity for…
Members of the Community Economies Research Network were active participants at the recent Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) conference, in September 2026 in London.
The conference was attended by around 2,600 people from 70 countries and there were over 600 sessions.
CERN members presented on topics as diverse as…
A recent special issue of the journal Local Environment on the topic of grassroots modalities of learning features the work of CEI and CERN members. The special issue was edited by CEI Member Ann Hill and CERN member Justin See to show what different communities are doing at the…
The keynote speakers for the seventh Community Economies Research Network (CERN) international LIVIANA online conference (Monday 2 to Friday 13 November) have been announced.
The first keynote "The transformative potential of Indigenous economic practices" will be presented on Monday 2 November by Matthew Scobie (Kāi Tahu), Georgia McLellan (Whakatōhea & Ngāi Te Rangi) and Jack Barrett (Ngāpuhi).
The second keynote "…
The first CEI Online Writing Workshop, The Politics and Practice of Writing for Community Economies, has just wrapped up.
The workshop was run over three weeks in June, with three 3-hour sessions each week.
There were eleven participants from Australia, Brazil, Europe and the UK, India, the Philippines and South Korea. Most were working on publications based on recently-completed PhDs, though several brought practitioner-oriented…
In this book chapter, I reflect on several different "Community Economy Return on Investment" projects I have been involved in over the last decade. I ask how we might measuring and communicate the holistic value of community wellbeing initiatives, and narrate the experiments of trying to do so with the organisation Life in Vacant Spaces, a community organisation that facilitates temporary use of vacant spaces in Ōtautahi Christchurch in
In this industry insights report, we summarise insights from our 2025 Measuring Circular Economies Symposium. The report finds that many of the challenges of measuring circular economies come from uncertainty about what to measure and how to measure it. Contributors include CEI members Stephen Healy, Abby Mellick Lopes, and Gradon Diprose. The report was funded by Massey University and was part of a one year project carried out by a team
This Nature Food correspondence was written in the lead up to the UNFSS+4 Stocktake in 2025, as a 'parallel' stocktaking of the Summit through a human rights lens. Using selected PANTHER principles (Participation, Accountability, Non-discrimination, Transparency, Human Dignity, Empowerment, Rule of Law) the authors evaluate
Young people around the world are mobilising for food sovereignty: the rights of peoples to define and control their own food and agricultural systems and the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food. While food sovereignty movements are emergent and take multiple forms, they share a common frustration with the failure of established political institutions to address the needs of people and communities.
This thesis is about the micropolitics of transforming food and agriculture governance institutions in a complex and uncertain world. For decades, food sovereignty movement actors have been mobilising to resist the privatisation of land, seeds, labour, culture and knowledge. Since 2010, they have been participating in policy negotiations inside the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) through an autonomous International Civil
