Our research

Shared Futures is a pioneering initiative that harnesses digital technologies sustainably to support communities and governments in transitioning toward a post-capitalist social economy—both locally and globally.

At its core is an open-source community platform, currently being piloted in diverse regions, that enables individuals, collectives, and public authorities to explore alternative economic models, reimagine their local areas through these lenses, and collaborate to turn radical ideas into practical realities. By combining digital innovation with principles of cooperation, equity, and ecological responsibility, Shared Futures offers a bold, practical pathway to systemic transformation.

The project is part of our Commons Economy, Work, and Transitions research cluster.

The Essex Artificial Intelligence Policy Observatory for the World of Work (E-AIPOWW) is a global initiative led by Professor Phoebe V Moore. E-AIPOWW tracks regulation, development and governance surrounding AI and analyses its impacts on the world of work.

Working with international partners across seven jurisdictions, including Brazil, Canada, China, the EU, India, the UK, and the USA, we challenge exploitative uses of AI, such as surveillance and labour devaluation, while promoting policies that uphold decent work and international labour standards.  The Observatory supports more democratic, equitable, and sustainable approaches to technology in the world of work.

The project is part of our Critical Studies in AI and Digitalisation (CSAID) research cluster.

Dr George Kokkinidis is oart of a funded team creating a standard social economy curriculum to be used in Universities and communities. 

Joining Social Economy Forces towards Community development, Connected societies, Co-creation of knowledge and Collaborative education practices is a Knowledge Alliance co-financed under Erasmus+ seeking to create an enabling environment for the Social Economy to thrive by promoting closer partnerships between Higher Education Institutions active in Social Economy, Social Economy organisations and enterprises, as well as community stakeholders.

Our key objectives are to:

• Provide an overview of the current Social Economy education landscape
• Pilot Social Economy Living Labs in 3 EU countries and the UK
• Bridge the gap in supply and demand of SE education and skills

Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life.

Operating as an open access media project since 2009, Minor Compositions seeks to bring practices of common-ing into theorizing and media production.

Thus far over 45 books have been published including David Graeber, Stefano Harney, Fred Moten, Felix Guattari, Erin Manning, and many others.

Nicholas is currently taking a leading role in the design and development the new MSc in Social Economy, drawing on his previous research on the commons and social economy, and his past experience in the broader not for profit sector.

Nicholas is also currently building and delivering a ‘Masters in Commons Administration’ as a part of the broader work on the commons of the new independent Institutes for Commons, of which is a core member.

He is also a board member of the European movement education project Common Ecologies.

Intersectional Network Of community and stakeholder Voices, And research to Tackle (in)Equities (INNOVATE) in mental health and well-being is a project funded by AHRC - UKRI.

INNOVATE is a consortium that catalyses multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder dialogue, research, and practice that deepens intersectional analysis and its application to drive a new transformative research and praxis agenda for health and social care while prioritising engagement of underserved population groups.

The consortium will produce new ways to consider health inequality challenges, drawing on leading-edge intersectional analysis, and offer grounded insights, practical tools and innovative approaches to build capabilities, and foster resilient systems and healthy communities.

Organise Now! is a peer to peer network established by BFAWU (the Bakers, Food, and Allied Workers Union), Strike Map, and Notes from Below. It connects people who want to try and change their working conditions with more experienced people for the trade union movement and other campaigning organisations.

The project is hosted through an online platform and has had hundreds of volunteers sign up since the launch in August 2022. However, there is little funding to support the early phase of the project. A grant could accelerate the process by providing support for outreach and website costs.

This project has the potential to shed new light into two important areas: first, what are the issues that low-paid and precarious workers face - and how can they address these? Second, what new forms of organisation can support collective self-organisation?

Through engaging with partners in the Organise Now! project, these questions can be collectively explored, as well as generating meaningful impact.

The Energy Commons project brings together partners from across Europe and around the world to explore the transformative potential of community-owned renewable energy. By fostering collaboration, innovation, and shared ownership, we aim to develop sustainable energy systems that empower local communities, reduce environmental impact, and promote economic resilience. This initiative is grounded in the belief that a just and ecologically responsible energy future is possible when people come together to take collective control of the resources that power their lives.

The project is part of our Commons Economy, Work, and Transitions research cluster and is led by Peter Bloom and Camila Vergara.

Green Transitions is a bold initiative that challenges the dominant, unsustainable models of green capitalism by exploring alternative pathways rooted in commons ownership, degrowth, and ecological abundance.

Working with a diverse network of collaborators, the project seeks to reimagine how societies can transition toward truly sustainable futures—beyond profit-driven solutions. By emphasising shared stewardship of resources and the cultivation of well-being over consumption, Green Transitions opens space for new models that are socially just, ecologically sound, and economically viable for all.

The project is part of our Commons Economy, Work, and Transitions research cluster and is led by Nicholas Beuret.

This project explores how community ownership models can help queer spaces not only survive but thrive in the face of gentrification and closure. Moving beyond a narrow focus on protecting existing venues, it investigates how practices of commoning — collective governance, shared resources, community stewardship, co-operative organising — can expand the possibilities for queer spaces as future-oriented project in the making of other possible worlds.

By centering queer community practices and ownership structures, the project highlights how alternative economic models can resist market logics and build lasting infrastructures of care and belonging. 

The project is part of our Decolonising and Queering the Commons research cluster and is led by Olimpia Burchiellaro.

Plebian Rights is a transformative project dedicated to exploring new forms of bottom-up democratic rights grounded in the material realities and collective power of everyday people. It seeks to develop frameworks for “material constitutions” that reflect the lived needs and struggles of communities, rather than the interests of elites.

By challenging systems of oligarchy and economic exploitation, Plebian Rights aims to support the emergence of a more egalitarian, commons-based society—one where justice, participation, and shared prosperity define the foundation of democracy.

The project is part of our Democracy, Rights, and the Commons research cluster and is led by Camila Vergara.

• Bloom, P., Jones, O. S., & Woodcock, J. (2021) Guerrilla Democracy: Mobile Power and Revolution in the 21st Century, Policy Press
• Bloom, P. (2020) Identity, Institutions and Governance in an AI World: Transhuman Relations, Springer Nature
• Moore, P. V. (2019) The quantified self in precarity: Work, technology and what counts, Routledge
• Shukaitis, S. (2009) Imaginal machines: Autonomy & self-organization in the revolutions of everyday life, Autonomedia
• Shukaitis, S (2016) The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics & Cultural Labor After the Avant-Garde, Rowman & Littlefield International
• Barbagallo, C., Beuret, N. & Harvie, D. (2019) Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federic, University of Chicago Press Economics Books
• Nunes, R. (2021) Neither vertical nor horizontal: A theory of political organization, Verso Books
• Woodcock, J. (2021) The Fight Against Platform Capitalism: An Inquiry into the Global Struggles of the Gig Economy, London: University of Westminster Press
• Preston, J. & Firth, R. (2020) Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom, Palgrave Macmillan
• McGoey, L. (2015) No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy, Verso

• Moore, P. V. (2022) Problems in protections for working data subjects: The social relations of data production, Global Political Economy 1(2)
• Moore, P. V. (2020) Data subjects, digital surveillance, AI and the future of work, Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) European Parliament
• Kokkinidis, G. & Checchi, M. (2021) Power matters: Posthuman entanglements in a social solidarity clinic, Organization, 1350508420973304
• Daskalaki, M. and Kokkinidis, G. (2017) Organizing Solidarity initiatives: A socio-spatial conceptualization of resistance, Organization Studies, 38(9): 1303-1325
• Kokkinidis, G. (2015) Spaces of possibilities: Workers' self-management in Greece, Organization, 22(6): 847-87
• Kokkinidis, G. (2015) Post-capitalist imaginaries: The case of workers’ collectives in Greece, Journal of Management Inquiry, 24(4), 429-432
• Kanngieser, A. & Beuret, N. (2017) Refusing the World: Silence, Commoning, and the Anthropocene, South Atlantic Quarterly, 116 (2), 363-380
• Howarth, D. & Roussos, K. (2022) Radical Democracy, the Commons and Everyday Struggles during the Greek Crisis, The British Journal of Politics and International Relation

• Politics and Society After Work, Anthem Press – Edited by Professor Peter Bloom

 The Anthem Series on Politics and Society After Work publishes scholarly interdisciplinary work on the creation of empowering post-work societies locally and globally, seeking to better critically understand how technology can liberate individuals and lead to more emancipatory social, organisational, and inter-personal relationships while also transforming the everyday practices and deeper ideologies our current neoliberal status quo. The series focuses on the different political, cultural and institutional arrangements and perspectives associated with the move toward a potential “post-work” economy.

• Minor Compositions - Edited by Professor Stevphen Shukaitis

 This a series of interventions & provocations drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life.

• Journal: Global Political Economy - Co-Editor in Chief, Professor Phoebe Moore

Global Political Economy (GPE) is the much-anticipated journal for the discipline of global political economy, with an explicit intention of cross-disciplinarity, spanning international relations, sociology, feminism and gender studies, political science, business studies, science and technology studies, communications, economics, geography, and more, encouraging debates and discussions across these arenas.