It is about power! Unveiling power and empowerment in grassroots agri-food initiatives. Grassroots Innovations Webinar, Sustainability Transitions Research Network. Abstract. This webinar examines the role of power and empowerment in grassroots-led food system transformation. It focuses on prefiguration (enacting a desired future in the present) as a particular contribution of grassroots initiatives to food system transformation….

Sustainability transformation: critical perspectives in times of discord. Keynote talk. Social Sciences for Climate Change: From Knowledge to Action, Eurac Research, Bolzano/Bozen, 4-5 September 2025. Abstract. Over the past few decades, the social sciences have established their presence in global environmental change and sustainability studies. They have been shown to be crucial in unpacking the social…

Grassroots initiatives in the context of postgrowth thinking. Keynote talk. Policy Lab Workshop titled “Grass-Root Transformations for Beyond Growth”, European Policy Centre, Brussels, Belgium, 10 June 2025.  

Riflessioni sui percorsi di trasformazione post-crescita dei sistemi agroalimentari. Food Studies Lab, Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of Turin, Italy, 5 June 2025, held online.

Giuseppe Feola presented the paper ‘Facilitar el desaprendizaje en la enseñanza agrícola: un estudio de caso en los Países Bajos’ at the VI Seminario Internacional Educación para la Sustentabilidad organised by Escuela de Ciencias Humanas at Unitrópico. The talk built on the paper Facilitating unlearning in agricultural education: preparing for family-farm succession, coauthored with Laura…

Today Giuseppe Feola gave a research seminar titled ‘How (not) to initiate a grassroots agri-food initiative: insights from a Dutch case study’ at the Sustainability Institute (Maastricht University). Abstract: This seminar presents new empirical evidence and nuanced reflections on the social processes of transformation within grassroots agri-food initiatives that propose relocalised, decentralised and autonomous ways…

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…