Alexandros Kioupkiolis on Heteropolitics

The Heteropolitics research project (2017-2020), which has been funded by the European Research Council (ERC), explores alternative modes of political organization at local level in Greece, Italy and Spain.

The Heteropolitics project looks at local structures of community organization as cultural spaces self-managed by citizen groups in collaboration with the municipal government and political formats by which citizen collectives run for elections and claim the right to take a more active role in municipal administration with the intent of increasing the real participation of citizens in local government. In other words, the research is focused on alternative forms of political organization at local level based on the citizens’ own initiative and on the local government, which improve everyday life and the real quality of democracy.

As Alexandros Kioupkiolis mentions: “our aim is to collect, show and spread good practices of alternative political organizations, which emerge from the bottom up in the three countries we studied. Our goal is to promote a deepening of democracy with the aim of dealing creatively with the political and social crisis”.

Video documentation of the Heteropolitics workshop

For those who were unable to follow the live-stream of the workshop we organized last weekend at the Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, here’s the video of the 1st day, which includes the presentations of the final findings by the heteropolitics research group, as well as the sound-recording of the plenary discussion that took place on the 2nd day of the workshop.

We are also going to add English subtitles to the videos in order to make them more accessible to non-Greek speaking audiences, so make sure to check back in a few days!

Update: here’s the transcripts of the workshop presentations/discussions and their translation in English:

Heteropolitics workshop in Thessaloniki on October 17-18

For researchers and activists interested in exploring the transformative potential of the commons, the Heteropolitics research team is organizing a two-day workshop at the Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on 17-18 October, which will be live-streamed via our periscope channel: https://www.periscope.tv/w/1ynJOqarjzyKR

Update: the stream will go live at 15.15 p.m. on Saturday

Demystifying the Digital Economy

The Research Group for the Digital Economy and Private Law (at the Faculty of Law at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) is hosting a very interesting seminar cycle that begins tomorrow at 19:00 (Room 8, 3rd Floor) with a presentation from Alex Pazaitis (of the P2P Lab) themed “Demystifying the Digital Economy“.

The seminar cycle includes three more talks:

  • Fri 8 Nov: Alex Pazaitis – The Commons and peer production: A short introduction
  • Fri 15 Nov: Alex Pazaitis – The political economy of peer production: Two general approaches
  • Fri 22 Nov: Angelos Kornilakis – Legal mapping of small-scale economic networks of peer production