This series of events brings researchers and activists working on food sovereignty, agroecology and food justice to share stories and analysis of critical issues in just transitions in food systems. These inspiring stories, strategies and insights will help us all collectively power up in the struggle for a more just and sustainable world.
Upcoming Seminars
Feb. 26 2025 - Katherine Gibson
Postcapitalist Community Economies Here and Now:
Sowing the Seeds of Transformative Futures
February 26, 2025 5:30-7:00pm
Leahy 102, 105 Carrigan Dr Burlington VT 05405
Register below for virtual option
What does reframing the economy as diverse 鈥榙o鈥? And why is it a necessary step towards transforming the ways of living that are threatening life itself? In this talk Katherine Gibson will outline the Diverse Economies Research Project and discuss strategies for enacting ethical economies that community economy scholar activists are involved in.
Katherine Gibson is Professor Emerita at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University and was the 2022 Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies, Harvard University. She is a feminist economic geographer with an international reputation for innovative research on economic transformation and over 30 years鈥 experience of working with communities to build resilient economies. As J.K. Gibson-Graham, the collective authorial presence she shares with the late Julie Graham (Professor of Geography, University of Massachusetts Amherst), her books include The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (Blackwell 1996) and A Postcapitalist Politics(University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Her most recent books are Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities, co-authored with Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), Making Other Worlds Possible: Performing Diverse Economies, co-edited with Gerda Roelvink and Kevin St Martin (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), Manifesto For Living in the Anthropocene, co-edited with Deborah Bird Rose and Ruth Fincher (Punctum Press, 2015) and The Handbook of Diverse Economies (Edward Elgar, 2020) co-edited with Kelly Dombroski. She is a founding member of the Community Economies Collective and Co-Director of the .
Mar. 18 2025 - Ali Taherzadeh
Organising Together for Transformation:
Taking a Social Movement Ecology Approach to the UK Agroecology Movement
March 18, 2025 5:30-7:00pm
Stafford 101, 95 Carrigan Dr Burlington VT 05405
Register below for virtual option
Food system change based on agroecology doesn鈥檛 follow a single, technical path. Instead, it takes many different and sometimes messy routes, shaped by the people and communities involved. These transformations rely on dialogue between different ways of knowing and are often led by grassroots action and participatory processes. As such, social movements have long been key drivers of agroecology, but we still know little about how these movements organise鈥攅specially in the global North.
In this seminar, I share findings from Resisting, Learning, Growing, a research project exploring how the UK agroecology movement learns, organises, and grows. I look at the tensions within the movement鈥攈ow it tries to reach beyond its usual networks while holding onto its radical, prefigurative practices. This work builds on the Social Movement Ecology framework developed by grassroots trainers at the Ulex Project and Ayni Institute, alongside insights on coalition-building from early US feminists of colour.