Main scientific achievements:
• established the Alpine Community Economies Lab as an internationally recognized and networked community-based research space that continues beyond the Fellowship;
• developed and published in open-access a series of inventive participatory methods to catalyse community economies initiatives;
Main innovation outputs:
• activation of four theory-practice relays that continue beyond the Fellowship, each offering innovative products and services based on community economies’ principles;
Contribution to state of the art:
• strategies and tactics for eco-social design and sustainable regional development extrapolated from theory-practice relays;
• elaboration of rural commons concept in relation to community economies scholarship.
OUTLINE OF MAIN RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
Theory-practice relays
I co-initiated, supported and analysed community economies initiatives in my case study area, namely:
a) La Foresta – community academy, a space for community-led investigations into issues of commons and ecological citizenship located at the train station of Rovereto;
b) Comunità Frizzante [it. Sparkling Community], an award-winning 1:1 scale community economies experiment via the participatory production of fizzy drinks;
c) Forno Vagabondo [Roving Oven], a pizza oven on a cargo bike touring the villages of the Vallagarina valley to engage people in explorations of practical and political issues of food sovereignty;
d) Sottobosco [Underwood], an experiment in post-humanist educational practices on a mountain farm for families.
Futuring workshops
I designed and facilitated 14 participatory futuring workshops in which I invited over 80 local actors to imagine the valley in 2060 as a territory that knew how to engage the environmental crises and which became a model territory for sustainable and solidary modes of life. The workshop participants also included researchers from my host institution (such as climatologists, regional development scholars, experts on renewable energy), local politicians and employees of the local administration.
Street-level research space
I have experimented with running a street-level research space in my case study area.
Secondment
In 2019, I have spent one month at the Habitat Unit of the Technical University of Berlin to define the seed module of the community-based research lab and to outline a first structure for the participatory futuring workshops.
Symposia and festival
In 2019, I organised an international symposium that brought together local actors engaged in eco-social transformation, international eco-social design practitioners and an international cohort of community economies theorists to elaborate preliminary concepts and methods to feed into the toolkit.
In 2021, I organised a one-day international symposium (in hybrid format) as part of the 9 day-long Rural Commons Festival, which I co-organised with other local actors (
https://www.ruralcommonsfestival.com/(si apre in una nuova finestra)).
Publication and dissemination
Throughout the whole research process, I have disseminated work related to ACElab in multiple academic and non-academic formats, which are documented on the dedicated project website www.alpinecommunityeconomies.org. The workshops resulted in three dedicated publications with the publishing house Agents of Alternatives e.V.. The findings related to the theory-practice relays I intensively engaged in have been published as book chapters in Italian and German. I have published theoretical reflections on how eco-social design practice can support the transition to more ecologically and socially just economies as chapters in edited publications dedicated specifically to a design audience.
