Panel #1 ECONOMY AND PRODUCTION
Welcoming speech by the President of the Department Kostas Manolidis
Introduction to the project Docta Spes* Iris Lykourioti
Guest speakers:
Research and Degrowth (RnD) Barcelona
Angelos Varvarousis
Giorgos Kallis
P2P Lab - Tzoumakers
Vasilis Kostakis
Alekos Pantazis
Coordination: Iris Lykourioti, Kostas Manolidis
Responses: Dimitris Psychogyos, Maria Vrontissi
CV
Research and Degrowth Barcelona is a research collective that is part of the an academic association Research and Degrowth (R&D) dedicated to research, awareness-raising, and events organization around the topic of degrowth. R&D defines degrowth as a multi-level voluntary path towards reduction of production and consumption aiming at ecological sustainability, good life, liberty, and social justice. For R&D, degrowth is grounded in ecology, ecological economics, anthropology, psychology, and social sciences in general. In the degrowth process, R&D is concerned with democracy, international cooperation, and understanding as opposed to societal closure, fragmentation, and authoritarianism. R&D strives to bring scientists, civil society, practitioners, and activists together to think, imagine, discuss, and create proposals for sustainable degrowth. R&D supports and aims to maintain a diversity of degrowth strategies for achieving social equity and ecological sustainability, including grass-roots action and institutional interventions, academic and practical work, building of alternatives and opposition to environmentally and socially destructive projects and policies, local and international level work. At present, R&D conducts the majority of its local activities in Spain and France, while organizing and co-organizing international events in various parts of Europe and beyond. R&D has presently about fifteen active members based in Barcelona and France. It has created an informal network with members in more than 40 countries.
Angelos Varvarousis is a researcher and educator with a background in urban studies, human geography, urban and insular political ecology. He teaches at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and he is the director of the postgraduate course Degrowth: Ecology, Economics, Policy.He is also member of the research collective Research and Degrowth a leading research body in the field of sustainable degrowth, internationally. His research focuses on issues of urban degrowth, deurbanization, postgrowth insular development, sustainable management of common pool recourses and alternative lifestyles. He has written various books and scientific articles. In his recent book Liminal Commons he deals with the transformative dynamics of temporary collective action.
Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist, political ecologist, and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Barcelona. He is the coordinator of the European Network of Political Ecology, founding memberof the research collective Research and Degrowthand author of four books on Degrowth such asLimits. Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care (Stanford University Press, 2019), The Case for Degrowth (Polity Press, 2020). His research is motivated by a quest to cross conceptual divides between the social and the natural domains, with particular focus on the political-economic roots of environmental degradation and its uneven distribution along lines of power, income, and class. His current work focuses on the hypothesis of degrowth and how we can move to a society that prospers without growth. He was previously a Marie Curie Fellow at the Energy and Resources group at UC Berkeley, and he holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from the University of the Aegean, an MSc in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and an MSc in Environmental Engineering and a Bachelors in Chemistry from Imperial College, London.
The P2P LAB is an interdisciplinary research collective focused on the commons. P2P lab strives for integrative insights on the open-source technologies and practices. Its members write, edit and publish articles, reports, and books on the diverse range of topics they investigate. P2P organizes events for reflection, education and action about critical and creative tools for society-changing. The P2P Lab designs and implements projects that are based on participatory, community-based methods and practices. P2P Lab disseminates research and knowledge through the creation of spaces for creative resistance and commons-based alternatives.
Vasilis Kostakis is Professor at TalTech and Faculty Associate at Harvard University, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is the founder of the P2P Lab and a founding member of the “Tzoumakers” rural makerspace.
Alekos (Alexandros) Pantazis is Assistant Professor of Peer Education at the Department of Early Childhood Education of University of Thessaly (Greece), a Core Member of the P2P Lab research collective, and a visiting lecturer at the Master's Degree "Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice" at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is a member of the P2P Lab and the “Tzoumakers” rural makerspace.