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Centre

Centre for Commons Organising, Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER)

The centre aims to create a pioneering and global agenda for studying the theoretical and practical possibilities of how commons values based on principles of cooperation, collaboration, and open knowledge sharing can foster more egalitarian, inclusive, and participative 21st century economies, communities, and organisations

Part of Essex Business School

A photo of people taking the knee with their fist in the air.

We explore how cooperation, collaboration, and open knowledge sharing can radically transform organisations and society

Our research investigates how principles of cooperation, collaboration, and open knowledge sharing can foster more egalitarian, inclusive, and participative 21st-century economies, communities, technologies, and organisations.

The commons refers to the shared or public ownership of goods, resources, services, and knowledge. Across the world, innovative commons ideas ranging from community land trusts to participatory budgeting to worker owned cooperatives are being used to address climate change and global inequality. This Centre for Commons Organising, Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER) studies different theories for creating, managing, and promoting the commons – asking important questions how the commons can improve goods and services, be sustainably financed, and effectively marketed to populations and policy-makers.

Our research clusters

Critical Studies in AI and Digitalisation (CSAID)

Led by Professor Phoebe Moore, CSAID focuses on critically assessing the socio-political implications of emerging digital technologies, AI governance, and labour futures.

Find out more about our research projects on: Shared Futures; Digitalisation and Workers’ Rights; Community Business; AI Policy Observatory for the World of Work.

More about this cluster

Democracy, Rights, and the Commons (DRC)

The cluster explores how commons-based governance can be a pathway to realising universal rights and reinvigorating participatory democracy.

Find out more about our research projects on: Plebeian Rights; Organise NOW.

Commons Economy, Work, and Transitions (CEWT)

The cluster focuses on historical and emergent models of post-capitalist transformation with a view to designing practical blueprints for systemic change. This encompasses a wide range of topics such as housing, health, food, energy and work; including how we imagine and organise labour, livelihood, and social reproduction beyond capitalism.

Find out more about our research projects on: Energy Commons; Green Transitions.

Creative Commons and Design (CCD)

The cluster explores how arts, culture, and design practices contribute to commons-based systems and post-capitalist imaginaries. It focuses on the role of creative industries in reshaping value, ownership, and participation — from open-access cultural production and commons-based licensing to participatory urban design and storytelling for systemic change.

The stream supports collaborations with artists, curators, and cultural institutions, and host exhibitions, workshops, and design labs.

Find out more about our research projects on: Minor Compositions.

Decolonising and Queering the Commons (DQC)

The cluster explores how the commons can serve as a catalyst for confronting and transforming colonial, heteronormative, and exclusionary social systems. Drawing on queer theory, Indigenous epistemologies, and decolonial thought, it investigates how commons-based approaches can foster radically inclusive, pluralistic, and liberatory alternatives.

This stream also engages with decolonial land struggles, gendered care economies, and the reimagining of kinship, ownership, and belonging through queer and decolonial commons frameworks.

Find out more about our research projects on: Queer spaces and Community Ownership.

A person holding a sphere with a tree in their hands to represent growth.

Commons Development and Transformation

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Commons Technology

The hand of a robot, representing machine learning, digitalisation and the future of work.

Digitalisation, Work and the Commons

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Commons Design and Organisation

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Commons Health and Services

Commons Education

Our research

Our impact and events

Our members

"The vision of the centre is to explore the theoretical and practical possibilities of how common ownership and organising based on values of cooperation, collaboration, and open knowledge sharing can foster more egalitarian, inclusive and participative 21st-century economies, communities, and organisations."

Professor Bloom Co-director, centre for commons, organising, values equalities and resilience

A group of protesters, mostly out of focus. In the foreground two young Black people wearing baseball caps kneel, each with a fist raised. The fist on the bottom right is in focus.

Centre for Commons Organising Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER) Co-Directors:

Peter Bloom, Phoebe Moore, and Stevphen Shukaitis

Email: coveres@essex.ac.uk

Essex Business School University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex

CO4 3SQ

Link: Essex Business School