CE Research Activities in Europe
Recent Community Economies Research Activities in Europe have included:
2025. GROW - Through Fungi
CEI Europe Member Elizabeth (Za) Barron (from Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim) recently convened a two-day workshop “Gender, Rights and Opportunities for Women – through Fungi” in Cotonou, Benin, as part of The International Fungal Conservation Conference.
The GROW workshop brought together researchers and practitioners from a range of backgrounds, including agroecology, conservation biology, midwifery and teaching. Knowledges and experiences were shared by participants from Sub-Saharan countries (including Benin, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe) and from European countries (including Norway, Portugal, Spain and the UK)
Discussion focused on topics such as sustainable fungal use and women’s livelihoods; the link between fungal livelihoods, gender and public health; and strategies for sharing scientific data, ethnobiological data, and traditional ecological knowledge to improve mushroom conservation practices.
The workshop was funded by a grant from Jamma Conservation and Communities, and administered by the International Institute for Environment and Development and the Community Economies Institute.
2025. Conundrums of Care
Conundrums of Care: Feminist Entanglements in Critical Development Studies by CEI Europe member Wendy Harcourt was published by Bloomsbury Academic. The book is Open Access. Wendy is the Series Editor of New Writing in Critical Development Studies published by Bloomsbury Academic.
2025. Vocabulary for Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles
Vocabulary for Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles: A Language for Our Common Future was published by Routledge as an Open Access book. CEI Europe member Thomas Smith was a co-editor (along with Lewis Akenji, Philip J. Vergragt, Halina Szejnwald Brown and Laura Maria Wallnöfer). The book contains 87 chapters .
2025. Opposition by Imitation
Publication of Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism by CEI Europe member Christina Jerne. The book explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. The book is published by University of Minnesota Press, and is the 11th book in the Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds book series.
"Placing human experience at the center of collective action, Opposition by Imitation presents radically new directions for thinking about social movements. Christina Jerne captures both the fragility and strength of the struggle against mafia economies, powerfully demonstrating how anti-mafia activism opens up space for non-mafia relationships and economies to flourish."--Kevin McDonald, Middlesex University
Podcasts based on the book include:
University of Minnesota Press Podcast, Episode 127, click here
New Books in Italian Studies Podcast, click here.
2025. Advisory Board Membership, Leuphana University, Germany
As part of her four-year term (2024 to 2028) on the Advisory Board of the Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and Society (LIAS), Leuphana University, Germany, CEI Europe member Emeritus Professor Katherine Gibson spent two months in mid-2025 in Lüneburg. She gave an informal overview of her research at a coffee seminar followed by a public lecture for the University. A short video, Ethical Economic Prototyping, was also produced featuring Katherine discussing Community Economies research.
2025. A Politics of Possibility Here and Now
A selection of works by CEI Europe member Emeritus Professor Katherine Gibson (as J.K. Gibson-Graham) was translated into Italian by Cesare Di Feliciantonio and Antonella Clare Vitiello. The title is Oltre il capitalocentrismo: Per una politica della possibilità qui e ora | Beyond Capitalocentrism: For a Politics of Possibility Here and Now.
In May 2025, Katherine visited Cesare Di Feliciantonio at La Sapienza University of Rome to conduct a short summer school with 35 higher degree scholars from across Italy. Seminars and master classes were interspersed with field trips to the outskirts of Rome to visit squatter communities and commons rewilding. Katherine also gave a public lecture hosted by the Italian Geographic Society.
2025. New European Bauhaus Meets Community Economies
An Erasmus+ project carried out by La Foresta - community academy (Italy) and Trajna (Slovenia) between December 2023 and November 2025. NEB Meets Community Economies was based on a theoretical framework rooted in community economies, and focused on identifying and sharing the diverse economic strategies and tactics that make innovative projects and organizations sustainable over time. There was a special emphasis on the kinds of economic reasoning and acting that these projects and organizations develop and deploy.
2024. Community Economies Institute (CEI) Flourish Fund (1)
An award was made to the Polička Collective to further their work on community economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The collective’s activities in 2024/25 included:
A visit to Haus des Wandels, a collective housing project in Eastern Germany, where the group met with locally-active citizens, hosted a dinner for residents, and conducted a photo elicitation exercise on the topic of a good life during and after socialism.
A visit to Kulturelle Landpartie, a community-based festival in Wendland, a rural area at the former border between East and West Germany where the group hosted discussions with people who are active in community economies on both sides of the former border.
2024. Community Economies Institute (CEI) Flourish Fund (2)
An award was made to Bianca Elzenbaumer from La Foresta – Accademia di comunità ETS (Italy) to help develop a practice-based PhD Training program merging training in feminist design with community economies. In November 2025, the application was submitted for funding within the framework of Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions. The application included PhD candidates being placed with community-embedded organisations such as Floating University Berlin, Terrra (TRR) in rural Romania and Public Works in the UK.
2024. Community Economies Institute (CEI) Flourish Fund (3)
An award was made to CEI Europe member Thomas Smith to support his work with Naděžda Johanisová to document community initiatives from around Europe and the world, and communicate these to a wide audience. The documentation includes a forthcoming 2027 book, Sustainable Economic Alternatives: Emerging Eco-Social Enterprises for Non-Growth Economies (Routledge Studies in Ecological Economics), featuring a series of lighthouse community projects based on detailed case studies and a glossary of key community economy terms.
