On 28 November 2024 Julia Spanier successfully defended her PhD thesis titled ‘A rural(–urban) perspective: Agricultural grassroots initiatives and the making of post-capitalist futures’. Abstract. This PhD thesis explores the role of agricultural grassroots initiatives (AGIs) in societal transformations away from the capitalist status quo. AGIs are bottom-up, small-scale alternatives that exist within (and in…

On 26 September 2024, Giuseppe Feola presented the paper titled ‘Beyond refusal: reconceptualising deconstruction in prefigurative social spaces’ at the Conference ‘Grassroots Innovations as Incubators of Sustainability Transitions’ at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Abstract. Social scientists have often studied grassroots initiatives in terms of prefiguration, which has generated important insights into the construction of…

Giuseppe Feola delivered the keynote talk at the opening session of the 15th Conference of the International Farming Systems Association in Trapani, Italy, on 1 July 2024. The talk, titled ‘Postgrowth farming systems: critique, visions, pathways‘, argued that the unsustainability and injustice of industrial food systems in modern capitalist societies have roots not merely in…

On 22 May 2024, Guilherme Raj defends his thesis titled ‘It is about power: Unveiling power and empowerment in grassroots agri-food initiatives’. This PhD thesis aims to elucidate the role of power and empowerment in the sustainability transformation of agri-food systems. Guilherme focuses on agri-food transformation within grassroots agri-food initiatives, which serve as spaces for…

Laura van Oers presented her PhD research on unlearning in sustainability transitions at UCLouvain (Belgium). The research talk was part of a tri-cycle of seminars on unlearning and critical approaches to nature-based solutions. Laura’s talk discussed the notion of ‘unlearning spaces’ and presented  insights from her empirical research on community supported agriculture in the Netherlands.

Giuseppe Feola spoke at Utrecht University’s Future Food Annual Symposium, on the theme ‘Future Food Systems: Evolution or Revolution’. Giuseppe discussed the following statement, in response to the organizer’s invitation to discuss whether achieving sustainable food systems would involve evolution or revolution, and what would be the role of scientists in that endeavour: Nothing short…

On 18 October Julia Spanier gave a talk titled ‘Rural-urban degrowth transformations: lessons from community-supported agriculture’ at the Postgrowth Cities project at the University of Amsterdam. Julia’s talk built on research from her PhD, and addressed the following questions: How are degrowth transformations facilitated and hindered by present-day rural-urban relations? What is the role and meaning…

Leonie Guerrero Lara presented the paper ‘Degrowth and agri-food systems: a research agenda for the critical social sciences‘ at the Critical Political Economy Research Network monthly meeting (online) on 5 October 2023. The discussant was Dr Bernd Bonfert, Postdoc at the Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University. The full paper can be found here.

Members of the UNMAKING team organized and/or presented at the  ‘3rd Utrecht Degrowth Symposium: Sowing sustainability in food and agriculture‘ at Utrecht University. The symposium brought together policymakers and civil servants, researchers, students, farmers,  social movements, and other interested people to explore what a degrowth perspective can bring to the debate on agri-food system sustainability….

Laura van Oers and Giuseppe Feola present at the 14th International Sustainability Transitions Conference in Utrecht. Laura van Oers: Community-supported agriculture as spaces to unlearn capitalism? Evidence from two Dutch cases. The importance of double-loop learning and associated unlearning for sustainability transitions is increasingly recognised (van Mierlo and Beers 2020; van Poeck and Östman 2021; Vetter…