We now turn towards the side events. As I said from the beginning, I see two:
An academic seminar.
The Reclaiming utopia workshop by @julyandavey or equivalent.
A party.
The academic seminar
The objective is to brainstorm around possible economics papers. These would contribute to the Lab’s ultimate goal – imagining alt-economies with scientific rigor.
We do it on the 12th (late) morning. Ideally we would partner up with one of the Brussels universities, but we can also just rent a room in Brussels. All we need is tables, chair, wifi, coffee and whiteboards.
It would be nice to have an utopian party somewhere. Walkaway starts with a “communist party”, which is a kind of party where participants reclaim assets that are perfectly usable and which people need, but are sitting frozen because they are not profitable. An obvious example of such assets would be the building stock of Leegbeek-St. Vide.
The room arrangements don’t sound too complicated, indeed. How many people are we thinking of? Between 10 and 20? A first thought on research teams that may be interested / interesting in Brussels:
Prof Tom Bauler, an ecological economist @IGEAT holding the Chair on “Environment & Economy” at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).
I attended one of his seminars on the relation between the economy and ecology last spring and judging from the reactions of fellow orthodox economists I would say he could be an interesting candidate to partner up with.
Centre for Economic and Social Studies on the Environment (CEESE) @ ULB may also be interested in hosting: I know fairly well Marek Hudon, he works mostly in social finance but can certainly play ball and spread the word. May be interesting to invite Antonin Pottier, saw him in a seminar organized by this crowd.
Other random researchers that work in town and already told me they are up to play the ball:
Giorgia Trasciani, PhD student in Economics and International Studies @ University of Aix-Marseille - University L’Orientale focussing on Social and Solidarity Economy, Coops, Migration, Public Policies and Social Issues
David Rinaldi, works at FEPS as Senior Economic Policy Advisor and is Maître de Conférences at the ULB – Institute for European Studies, where he teaches European Economic Governance. A good old friend of Edgeryders I just happen to discover!
It would be great to get asap a call for co-authors so I can spread the word in my own faculty (and beyond) and get in contact with the first two centers with something more consistent.
I was thinking about the new space nearby the Kanal where Cafébabel and Are We Europe just moved in → KANO
How many people shall we expect? Shall we organize this one rather together with the party which would rather be then on Saturday night? At the same time it would be nice to have something before and after the Monday event (before 6pm and after 8pm). WDYT @ilaria@alberto ?
Call for co-authors could be something like this. Does it work?
The Science Fiction Economics Lab exists to explore how we might improve our economies and societies by imagining radically different economic systems, and providing them with rigorous scientific underpinnings. To do this, the Lab facilitates collaborations between science fiction authors and readers (good at world building) and academic economists (good at reality checks). Its ultimate goal is to reintroduce blue-sky thinking into mainstream economics, involving academics, business leaders, politicians and writers and other artists in conceiving how greener, fairer, happier human societies could function in radically different ways from the status quo, and how to get there from here.
We call for economists, social scientists, science fiction writers of any age and experience level to participate in an invitation-only seminar to be held in Brussels, in venuename on November 12th 2019. The purpose of the seminar is to produce abstracts for one or (more likely) more papers or works of speculative fiction (for example, sci-fi short stories set against the backdrop of speculative economies), that co-authors will work towards in the coming months. The Lab will facilitate the matching between co-authors with similar interests and complementary strengths, and seek publication outlets for the papers/works of speculative fiction.
To apply, send an email to [create an address here] by October 25th, with a short letter of motivation. In the letter, state what your background is, what you would like to work on (eg. value theory, commons-based production, industrial economics) and why you think this is important. No credentials or titles are required, this is purely idea-based.