The StadsSalonsUrbains lecture series are back with an amazing line-up of speakers from across Europe and beyond! This year we will focus on struggles over urban property while drawing on empirical and theoretical accounts from cities across the globe.
The commons have a rural origin, dating back to the collective resource use by farmers from the medieval period onwards, but have found their way to urban environments in the meanwhile. Urban centers offer plenty of opportunities to set up institutionalised forms of collective action, given their density of population and diversity of needs. In many cases, both in rural and urban contexts, scarcity of resources is an important incentive to start thinking as a ‘commoner’. But that also brings challenges: how to cooperate, and to do so inclusively? And how to establish a solid, resilient organisation that can also survive the challenges both the free market (in the form of for example gentrification) and governments (which consider such institutions sometimes as an easy and cheap solution for unresolved social issues) pose?
Part of the 2021/22 StadsSalonsUrbains lecture series 'Cities for People, not for Profit. From private ownership to communal stewardship'.
Prof. Tine De Moor (°Ghent, 1975) holds a PhD in History from Ghent University (2003) and a postgraduate in Environmental Sciences at the University of Antwerp (1999). In December 2012, she was appointed professor of Institutions for Collective Action in historical perspective at the Faculty of Humanities, Department of History & Art History at Utrecht University, a position she held until her transfer to RSM. At her previous position, Tine De Moor conducted research into the creation, functioning and evolution of institutions for collective action, past and present, from the early modern period in Europe until today. Institutions for collective action are forms of organisations formed from below, by the immediate stakeholders, with the aim of working together to pursue both personal (material) and societal interests. Issues that have been studied by her research team are the many energy and care cooperatives that have developed over the past decennia, the initiatives of citizens involves in short chain food supply, the formation of platform cooperatives and the renewal of the mutual as a form of insurance for the self-employed. Besides this she has been researching labour market participation and household formation patterns over the past millennium, and she has been actively involved in developing innovative research methods, through, for example, several Citizen Science Projects. She has been president of the International Association for the Study of the Commons and has set-up the peer-reviewed *International Journal of the Commons*, and she acts as expert in several national and international boards. In the past 10 years, she received several large research grants, such as an ERC Starting Grant and an NWO-VIDI.
The capacity of the Tour à Plomb venue is restricted due to the current Covid-19 regulations. As a consequence, the on site audience will be limited to VUB-students for whom the StadsSalonsUrbains lecture series is a mandatory course. All others will be able to join in via the StadsSalonsUrbains-channel! [last updated: Sep-28 2021]